Cultural Conceptualization of Old Age in English

This chapter provides insight into the complex and changing conceptualization of old age from an interdisciplinary perspective with a focus on individual and cultural perception. Adopting a cognitive-discursive perspective, it also draws on recent works in cultural gerontology which tend to construe aging using cultural and social descriptors, as well as Cultural Linguistics, viewing old age as a cultural category, thus pointing to the process of aging and all related varying experiences. As human life expectancy increases, markers of aging become more fluid and flexible. In contrast to the prevailing biomedical approach, within Cultural Linguistics aging may be represented as a multifaceted, socially established process that is influenced by specific cultural context. Accordingly, the present chapter considers the cultural concept of old age as a dynamic entity that adapts to all the changes in society and undergoes transformation under the influence of both cultural and individual axiological factors that are represented in the literary discourse. Moreover, it outlines the main themes which refer to cultural conceptualization of older people. The primary emphasis in this research is on reconstructing the cultural schema of aging, highlighting the complexity inherent in the way the experience of growing old and the perceptions of elderly are represented in Anglophone society. The research results summarize new meanings of ‘aging’, as well as images, stereotypes and linguistic expressions used for cultural conceptualization of both old age and its representatives.