Language: A key element in cultural change in gerontology?

A famous television programme and a comment by its director on Twitter have caused a stir in the networks this week, fuelling the already heated debate on ageism in our society. 

On 31 January, Salvados hosted some of our country's great personalities who have achieved prestige and recognition in their respective disciplines, such as the former mayoress of Madrid Manuela Carmena, the singer Miguel Ríos and the football coach Javier Clemente, whose common denominator was that they were all over 70 years old. The interviews were intended to show the difficulties faced by older adults in Spain as a result of the prejudices and stereotypes instilled in our culture. The sensitive issue of pensions was also touched upon and, unsurprisingly, special attention was paid to the fact that the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in nursing homes has highlighted the shortcomings of the current disastrous model of care. 

So far so good. It never hurts for a programme that reaches more than one and a half million viewers every week to make such a widespread problem visible. What nobody expected is that Jordi Évole's words about the programme on the gigantic social network Twitter would unleash a controversy like the one that has been generated around the language we use in the context of ageing. 

The alarm bells immediately went off. Where was the problem? It is true that "we are one of the countries in the world with the highest life expectancy" and that "we have to seriously rethink the model of residential homes"; the journalist did not invent the wheel when he said this. Well, the fuss came because Évole had written "our elders". Criticism soon followed. 

From the website SerCuidadorA Red Cross (@SerCuidadorA) corrected him the next day, "They are not our elders!"

Fundación Matia (@MatiaFundazioa) responded in the same vein, attaching the image of the campaign against ageism launched in 2019 by the Madrid City Council's Directorate General for the Elderly and Social Services.

Feminist psychogerontologist Agnieszka Bozanic (@Agni_Bozanic) shared some educational images courtesy of GeroActivismo y Bricofem to avoid the use of ageist language in the clamour of the claim “Menos #edadismo, más #GeroActivismo”. 

Teresa Martínez, from ACPgerontología (@acpgerontologia), recommended its guide Personas mayores y lenguaje cotidiano, which analyses some 150 terms and expressions common in care settings. Others opted for the Chilean Escribir sin edadismo, escribir con geroactivismo from GeroActivismo and Bricofem. For those less inclined to read, recordings were made available of webinarios as Responsible Communication for Older People, held on 29 January 2021. And the list goes on. 

Everyone has wanted to take advantage of Évole's pull to contribute their grain of sand to the cause with the utmost conviction. But, in the face of this phenomenon, many have asked themselves: "Are you serious? It is certainly not my intention to give Évole or his entertainment programme any more fuel; but it is my intention to fan the flame of this necessary debate. And I say "debate" because it is not clear to everyone that the language and expressions we use on a daily basis to refer to older people can in any way be harmful. Is the question of language really so important for the spread or eradication of ageism?

Language philosophers have studied for centuries how words are able to shape our thinking. For example, Frege said that the referentialist theorists were wrong to think of names as mere labels and showed through descriptive theory the importance of thinking about the meaning we give to words in order for them to acquire their meaning in a given context. The current inherited from Cartesianism affirmed that words acquire meaning through their association with mental representations. And the Sapir-Whorf theory explained that language, linked to culture, was of crucial importance in organising, thinking or even perceiving the world. 

Wittgenstein's social view of language reminds us that the meaning of words depends on their use and how they are applied in each case. Griece showed that it is we, the speakers, who give meaning to words on the basis of the concept of communicative intention. What words mean is what we make them mean and this meaning always depends on the communicative intention of the speaker. Évole's communicative intention in using the expression "our elders" was, I am sure, far from being offensive. And yet, there are many who see a pejorative meaning in his words. 

Why do words like "old" or "elderly" and expressions like "our elders" or "the most vulnerable" have negative connotations for some speakers? This is so, say the experts, for the simple reason that in our culture we associate with them a meaning related to uselessness, uselessness, incapacity, incompetence, fragility, helplessness or dependence. All these words and expressions share an "air of family"-as the aforementioned Wittgenstein would say-which only encourages paternalistic attitudes, inequality and ageism, as well as the belief that the elderly are like children to be constantly helped and protected. It seems that the use of these words reflects the many stereotypes that are attributed to people simply because they are older and disregards the inherent heterogeneity of older people, their worth and their ability to contribute to society. The real problem, say those who understand this, is that the perpetuation of this kind of language, laden with fallacies, ultimately results in a simplification and stigmatisation that leads to patronising and standardised treatment of this age group. 

Reading more about this I wonder: Are we ourselves not trying to protect the elderly by insistently advocating for a change in the use of language that we believe is bad for them? Are we not looking at them as if they were children who cannot speak for themselves and who must be defended to the hilt? Are we not contributing to the chronification of stereotypes by trying to banish a whole series of concepts from our language by force, instead of redefining them through the revalorisation of our mental representations of the elderly? Old' has not always been synonymous with 'finished'. In the past it meant wisdom, respect and knowledge. The word is still the same; the thing is that we no longer see the elderly in the same way as we used to. 

I think the problem is not so much in the words as in the meaning we give them. It is not so much a question of altering the names, but of re-signifying them through a much more profound change, which in turn involves a transformation of our mental representation of old age today. If we think of the elderly as a burden on society, it makes no difference whether we call them "old", "elderly", "seniors" or "old people". What is the difference between saying "old" and saying "elderly" when it comes to breaking with the homogeneity attributed to them as a group? There is no point in using the expression "seniors" instead of "elderly" if when we see an 80-year-old person in the street we think -even without meaning to- "poor thing" or "where will she go alone at this hour?" or "how could she think of doing that at her age? I always try to follow the linguistic recommendations to refer to the elderly in a respectful way and, even so, no matter how hard I try, I cannot completely banish these ideas that appear in my mind when I least expect them. The weight of the matter, it seems to me, lies in the underlying idea we have about ageing and not so much in the words we use. Changing the words will get us nowhere if this effort is not accompanied by a change of mentality. 

I understand, however, that those who are committed to a change in vocabulary believe that they have found in this mechanism the formula to promote a perception of the elderly that is in line with reality and fair to them. The battle against ageism in language extends beyond the names we use to refer to older people in general. Other common terms in the institutional context such as "nursing home", "geriatric", "dependency", "disability", "patient", "carer" or "nurse", to name but a few, are in the spotlight and are advised to be replaced by others such as "nursing home", "community", "interdependence", "different abilities", "resident" or "care partner". All of this will not be effective if it does not go hand in hand with other structural changes. My mother will not care if I say to her "you are getting old", "you are becoming an old woman" or "you are already an old person", because she has a negative mental representation of ageing. Similarly, if I say to my father "you will have to live in a nursing home" or "we have to take you to a community for the elderly", he will feel just as bad because his idea of these institutions is very negative and it does him no good if I sugarcoat the way I refer to them. Let no one misunderstand me; the change in language seems to me to be a good start and I do not take the matter as a joke: I am just turning it over in my head. 

These reflections have reminded me of my beginnings in this blog. When I wrote my first post, my dear friend and coordinator of Envejecer en sociedad, Irene Lebrusán, warned me about several problems I had found in it regarding the language I had used to refer to the elderly. The truth is that I recurrently used expressions such as "old people" or "third age" -I had already been warned that "old people" could not be said- and I did not understand what the problem was, if I was going to continue to have the same representation in my mind of these people whether I called them that or any other way. Today, if those who know about it will forgive me - and hopefully enlighten me too - I am still not entirely clear. Transforming language is one of the ways to create a new culture of care, say my mentors at the Eden Alternative. But will the use of a different language be able to contribute to altering our entrenched mental representations of ageing? If so, I join the revolt without hesitation.