Talking about frailty: The relationship between precarity and the fourth age in older peoples' constructions of frailty

Abstract

The clinical identification of frailty is increasingly thought to be important in countries with ageing populations. Understanding how older people labelled as frail make sense of this categorisation is therefore important. A number of recent studies have reported negative perceptions of the term among older people themselves. Building on this, we focus on how and why those assessed to be frail make sense of frailty as they do. We draw on a discourse analysis of situated interviews with 30 older people accessing emergency care in an English NHS hospital. Three interpretive repertoire pairs (Frailty is a bodily issue / frailty is about mind-set; Frailty is a negative experience / frailty is an inevitable experience; I'm not frail / I feel frail), identified across the participants' talk, are outlined and discussed in relation to discourses of the fourth age and precarity. We conclude that frailty is often seen in terms what others have referred to as ‘real’ old age and is linked to discourses of dependence and precarity.