"Old age doesn't come alone": discursive representations of health-in-aging in geriatric medicine.

Traditional approaches to identity across the lifespan have assumed that age itself and generational statuses and roles determine "who we can be." In contrast, a discursive perspective can show how, during interaction, we actively construct age-salient identities for ourselves and others through talk. Conversational processes of age-identity management are explored in a corpus of (United Kingdom) geriatric medical outpatient consultations. In diverse ways, doctors deny the age-relevance of medical troubles that their patients routinely endorse.