Enacted category claims and tacit orientations to older identities in the telling of a sexually-explicit anecdote

2.1 Membership categorization analysis and age-in-interaction

Harvey Sacks’ (1995) concept of Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) encompasses the idea that people are members of multiple numbers of categories – like ‘older women’, ‘men’, ‘strange people’, etc. Categories are like storehouses of knowledge held by society about the kinds of attributes, behaviour, etc., proper to and expectable from members of particular categories (Sacks 1995: Vol I, 40–41): they are “inference rich”. One piece of inferential work that categories are used for, is to explain behaviour (or attitudes, attributes, states, etc). For example, a boyfriend’s reluctance to commit to another meeting can be explained with the categorial generalisation “That’s ↑me:n” (Stokoe 2009: 82); or as we see in this paper, the category ‘old chap’ can be used to imply a lack of interest in (or capability for) sex. In each of these cases, the categories achieve their explanatory function because of the attributes (and activities, states, etc) that are ‘bound’ – normatively associated, rather than inevitably linked – to the categories in question.

Membership categorization analysis has produced a considerable body of work examining how categories may be made relevant through the use of category terms (e.g., ‘he’s an old man’) and category-resonant descriptions (e.g., ‘at my age’). This research tradition includes examining how categories and descriptions are designed in talk and their sequential location – for example in complaint sequences (e.g., papers in Antaki and Widdicombe 1998; Stokoe 2009; Stokoe and Edwards 2007). However, until recently rather less attention has been given to the way category membership may be made relevant in ways other than using category terms or category-resonant descriptions (Butler and Fitzgerald 2010: 2464). One way this is achieved is through the sequential structures and a range of interactional practices of the evolving talk, for example: making offers (Sacks 1995: Vol II: 318–331); making the other accountable (Paoletti 1998a); producing assessments (Raymond and Heritage 2006); turning-taking structures (Butler and Fitzgerald 2010: 2463); or initiating repair (Egbert 2004; Raymond 2019).

Particularly relevant to this paper are the examples that focus on older age. In this regard Sacks (1995: Vol II: 318–331) showed how the categories ‘widower’, ‘stubborn old man’ and ‘burden’ became progressively and successively relevant and orientated to by participants over a family meal through shifts in the way an offer (of a piece of herring) was made and rejected; and Paoletti (1998a) illustrated how a man, who looked old, was constructed as ‘senile’ through the way the interviewer did not make him accountable for incoherence in his responses. Importantly, these structures of talk display participants’ tacit, unstated, and so deniable orientations to the relevant category-bound activities, attributes, states, etc. For example, in Paoletti’s (1998a) account, the stereotypical link at issue is that between incoherent or mumbling talk and ‘senile’ older age. The category ‘senile old man’ or even ‘old man’ was never stated. However, through refraining from a normative interactional practice (insisting on clarification upon receipt of an incoherent response), the interviewer’s orientation to the other’s incoherence as being because he ‘was’ a ‘senile old man’ was made evident. In the case study analysed in this paper, explicit categories are named, both age-related and other; but orientations to ageing and other categories are also displayed and enacted through interactional choices and the structures of interaction.

Until relatively recently, and with some notable exceptions (e.g., Coupland and Coupland 1994; Paoletti 1998b, 1998a), older age-in-interaction was the poor relation in terms of studies of identities-in-interaction (Georgakopoulou and Charalambidou 2011: 31; Matsumoto 2009: 129–130). Recent years, though, have seen a burgeoning interest in the construction of older age-in-interaction, with much of this drawing on MCA (e.g., Heinrichsmeier 2020; Jolanki 2004; Näslund 2017; Poulios 2009). These studies, variously, explore the way – and show how – participants orientate to social norms or stereotypes about appropriate behaviour, states or attitudes for particular ages (Nikander 2000, 2009), for example, the appropriate age for entering into the stage-of-life category ‘first-time parent’ (Ylänne and Nikander 2019); the positive value of being busy and active in later life (Jolanki 2004; Underwood 2011); or, particularly relevant for this paper, the taboo nature of telling sexually explicit or ‘dirty’ jokes by older women (Charalambidou and Georgakopoulou 2014).

2.2 Older women, older men: sexual and other stereotypes

Western culture is replete with images and stereotypes of later life. The dominant image of ageing is of decline, both physical and cognitive (Bowd 2003: 32; Coupland 2014 [2001]; Heinrichsmeier 2020: 48–67), with the latter especially signalling ‘real old age’ (Degnen 2012: 92–94). Failing memory, inability to learn new things (particularly technological), increased confusion and loss of behavioural restraint are all associated with ageing (Heinrichsmeier 2020: 54–60).

Various sexual losses and taboos are also associated with ageing. Coupland et al. (1991: 133) commented on the way the teasing of middle-aged people on their birthdays helps reproduce a range of negative elderly stereotypes, including sexual inactivity. In fact birthday cards, among other negative portrayals of ageing (Ellis and Morrison 2005), commonly include disparaging comments about appearance and sexual failure (Bytheway 1995: 76–77). More generally, older bodies tend to be portrayed as sexually unattractive, particularly women’s (e.g., Gatling et al. 2017: 27); as sexually impotent; and, indeed, as asexual (Bowd 2003: 27, 32; Bytheway 1995: 84; Gatling et al. 2017: 23; Heywood et al. 2017: 797; Wada et al. 2015). This is despite studies showing that older people do still engage in pleasurable and fulfilling sex (Heywood et al. 2017: 797; Wada et al. 2015: 46).

Whereas men tend to be the butt of jokes relating to sexual impotence with age (Bowd 2003), women tend predominantly to be portrayed as undesirable and uninterested in sex (Kessler et al. 2004: 547; Nimrod and Berdychevsky 2017). Furthermore, and perhaps precisely because older women are supposed to be uninterested in sexual matters, lewd and sexually-explicit talk, such as telling sexually-orientated jokes or engaging in talk that displays the speaker’s interest in sex, is often orientated to as deviant for this group (Jones 2002: 130; Matsumoto 2009: 145), e.g., by laughter, delays in telling, or even not articulating the supposedly lewd word. When older women do, then, engage in such talk, it can have the effect of contesting stereotypical constructions of older womanhood (e.g., Charalambidou and Georgakopoulou 2014: 148; Kotthoff 2006: 21), even if, as we shall see in the case study in this paper, the sexually-explicit talk has been introduced to achieve other interactional goals.

4.1 Telling a sexually-explicit anecdote: older age and other identities

Violet first sets up the background, portraying the prospective recipient as someone who has always sent her ‘cheeky or rude birthday cards’ (Extract 1, l.64), which he laughs at (l.68), and which – in common with many birthday cards in Western countries (Bytheway 1995) – are rude (l.70) or ‘really naughty’ (ll.70, 73). Her ‘so’ in l.75 draws a consequence from what went before, and the reference to ‘his birthday’ (l.76) primes Violet’s recipient to expect some sort of revenge story, some plan to mirror to her relative his behaviour to her: they will be looking for something ‘cheeky’ or ‘rude’ in her tale. Violet then continues by explaining the form this ‘revenge’ is going to take (ll.77ff). See Appendix for transcription notation.

We could say a lot about how Violet builds to the climax and creates involvement, but our focus here is on how she makes ageing and other identities relevant for herself and others. As we see, she repeats the ageing-relevant term ‘old’ three times (l.79, 80, 84); and she does this as part of reiterating her description of how the figures in the card are grouped (ll.79–81, 83–84), making gender as well as age relevant. The introduction of gender relevance adds to the expectations that Violet’s story will have something rather rude about it. At this point she seems possibly about to introduce the card’s caption (l.86) but then breaks off and adds further descriptive detail. This detail – being on an outing – is an activity stereotypically associated with older folk (Ylänne-McEwen 1999: 419), and Violet herself orientates to this association (l.88–90). Her repetition in ll.83–84 and her parenthetical insert of ll. 87–90 have the effect of deferring the actual denouement. This builds suspense; also, though, it is a further signal (along with the rarity of such talk in this site) that telling sexually-explicit anecdotes are taboo in this setting (Charalambidou and Georgakopoulou 2014: 141).

Continuing her story, Violet now focusses on the card’s caption; and with the self-speak of l.93 and the repetition of ll.94–95 she alerts her recipients to the importance of the exact words of the caption. This caption – ‘always keep a twinkle in your wrinkle’ – already carries mild sexual innuendos: the picture of the old man surrounded by old ladies is intended to offer an example of successful sexual encounters even in later life. The humour depends on the sexist and ageist stereotype of older men not engaging in sexual relations as they age (Bowd 2003: 28); and the ‘old chap’ is presented as a possible – perhaps absurd – exception to that stereotype (Bowd 2003: 32). As such, the caption to this card could already have been taken as the point of Violet’s story, as being both ‘cheeky’ and ‘rude’.

However, Violet goes further. In overlap with Rachel’s and Joellen’s laughter, she draws a consequence of this caption (‘so’, l.99), her laughter warning that this consequence is going to ‘cap’ the caption she has just provided. The action she proposes taking (‘taking the R out of wrinkle’) does indeed cap the card’s original caption. It turns the sexual innuendo into something rather more improper,that in the context of the card’s illustration, produces a caption that is certainly ‘rude’ (l.70), if not crude or even ‘dirty’.^[3] Notably, Violet does not actually articulate the sexually-explicit word, ‘winkle’; instead she leaves it to her interlocutors to work things out. Among other things, this ‘non-stating’ further points to Violet’s own orientation to her anecdote as delicate (Bredmar and Linell 2007), as an impropriety, as pushing at the bounds of polite discourse. By not mentioning this, she implicates her interlocutors in her own impropriety, making them party to it.

We now turn to the identities constructed by and for Violet. In telling the anecdote, she positions herself as lively, witty, and as uninhibited enough to push the bounds of polite discourse to the point of using improper language – at least in the card to her relative, even if she stopped short of actually uttering the word ‘winkle’ in the salon interaction itself. These attributes, and the activity she describes herself as having in mind to do, are bound to some category like ‘social rule breaker’ or ‘uninhibited person’. Violet’s enacted claim to this vague category is endorsed by Joellen and Rachel. Sacks (1974: 346) argued that jokes, and especially dirty jokes, are like understanding tests, whereby asserting a lack of understanding can display a lack of sophistication. One obvious way of asserting understanding of a joke is to laugh; this anecdote, that relies on the recipients’ quick understanding of the implications of ‘taking the R out of wrinkle’, works similarly. As we see, both Joellen and Rachel, with their immediate shared laughter (ll.105ff) that lasts for 16 s, assert that they’ve got the point. This offers strong ratification of Violet’s identity claims, at least as witty.

They then go further. As the laughter dies, first Joellen and then Rachel comment on their reactions to Violet’s anecdote (not shown in detail, for reasons of space). First Joellen, audibly smiling, says: ‘I think our spellings are okay’, which generates renewed laughter. Rachel then observes, ‘sadly so’s our slang knowledges’. This latter comment triggers a short sequence in which the participants propose that they should have responded with displays of (faked) innocent ignorance (‘I don’t know what you mean’, ‘whaaat?’). Through these utterances, Joellen and Rachel further display their understanding of Violet’s anecdote – and its risqué nature; they also confirm the characterization of Violet’s current and proposed activities as not only witty, but also as an impropriety. This in turn further reinforces Violet’s incumbency of some category like ‘uninhibited person’.

What about ageing? This has been made repeatedly relevant through ageing-relevant terms, through references to category-bound activities (outings) and through drawing on ageist and sexist stereotypes of older men. However, none of this obviously implicates Violet. Indeed, the action Violet proposes taking with the card could have been undertaken by anyone. Rather, all the ageing-relevance has been directed at the recipient. He has already been described by a kinship term that suggests he is older than Violet (‘ex father-in-law’, ll.55–57). If we apply the principle of “recipient design” (Sacks et al. 1974: 727) to the activity of choosing a card for someone, we can infer that Violet is orientating to her relative as being old enough for this age-loaded card to be appropriate for him. Furthermore, Violet’s amendment casts the recipient of the card into the category of an ‘old chap’ for whom the tease of the amended caption might be sufficiently relevant to have enough bite for a revenge card.

So Violet has recounted a risqué anecdote which has drawn on widely circulating ageist and sexist stereotypes and which has been very appreciatively received and has cast her into a positive identity category. Despite her use of these ageist stereotypes, though, and her clear orientation to ageing, it is not clear that Violet – in the content of her story – has orientated to herself as ‘older’. However, when we examine what preceded Violet’s anecdote we gain richer insights into what Violet is doing with this telling.

4.2 Local occasioning: claiming and enacting category incumbency

The immediate occasioning of Violet’s anecdote is shown as Extract 2. This starts two ‘lines’ prior to Extract 1 and reproduces the start of that extract. Jefferson (1978: 220) showed how prospective tellers tend to design their stories to be locally occasioned, such that they are shown to be somehow related to prior talk. Here, we see that Violet’s bid to tell a story (ll.55–57, l.59, l.62) is interspersed with Bethan’s and Joellen’s business-orientated talk (l.54, l.58, l.60). With the mention of ‘cheeky’ and ‘rude’ (l.64), Violet more clearly signals a possible story in the offing, and this wins a display of interest from Joellen (l.66). At first glance, it looks as if her ‘w(r)inkle’ story was launched ‘out of the blue’, perhaps to win back the stylist’s temporarily-diverted attention.

However, a story’s genesis may have its roots further back in an interaction. Moreover, much conversation analytic work has shown that stories get worked up to do something in the evolving sequence (e.g., Stokoe and Edwards 2006: 57). When we examine the longer sequential environment in which Violet tells her story, we shall see that it is precisely placed and designed to accomplish a particular interactional goal, that it does indeed “articulat[ate] with the particular context in which [it is] told” (Jefferson 1978: 219).

To examine the more distal occasioning of Violet’s story we need to go back nearly a minute to scrutinize the sequence leading up to its immediate launch (Extract 2 above). This more distal occasioning starts with Extract 3, below. In the 2½ min preceding Extract 3, Violet had been talking of a forthcoming trip to see a theatre production of a well-known British television sitcom that ran from 1989–1998. This had prompted Bethan, overhearing the conversation from where she was cleaning, to recount how she used to watch the sitcom as a child. She had then given an uninhibited rendition of the series’ theme tune, apparently unconcerned about the audience of Violet, Joellen, Rachel and the older client sitting under the hood-dryer. This had occasioned considerable laughter, and Joellen and Violet had commented upon the implications for Violet’s enhanced enjoyment of her theatre trip. We pick up the talk as Bethan recounts how her father had categorized her as a ‘strange child’ (Extract 3, ll.1–3).

Bethan’s father is the author (Goffman 1981: 144) of the reported speech of ll.2–3. However, Bethan chooses to animate her father to utter this categorial evaluation of her at just this point, immediately following her rendition of the sitcom’s theme tune in the small salon. Furthermore, she embeds laughter particles in his words ‘strange child’ and follows up with more laughter. This invites us to see her adopting the roles of both co-author and principal of her father’s reported utterance; that is, she is claiming that utterance as voicing her own beliefs. Furthermore, by invoking her father’s authority at precisely this point, Bethan is implicitly claiming the continued currency of at least part of that categorization (‘strange’). By claiming this category, effectively ‘strange person’, for herself, Bethan also displays a positive stance towards that category. Indeed, being considered a ‘strange person’ can be considered a positive categorial identity ascription, signalling independence of thought or a certain eccentricity in action.

Joellen (ll.4–5) and Violet (l.9) teasingly respond that she has not changed. Given that Bethan is observably no longer a child, these teases must be asserting that what has not changed is the ‘strangeness’ element of her father’s evaluation. However, given Bethan’s alignment with her father’s utterance and the laughter with which Joellen’s and Violet’s assessments are produced, these teases have more ‘bonding’ than ‘biting’ to them (Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997: 279). Indeed Bethan first agrees with Joellen (l.11) and then produces a ‘thank you’ in response to Violet (l.14), whose laughter particles mark this as ironic in line with the teasing environment that is being constructed. With Bethan’s thanks (l.14) and Joellen’s laughter (l.15) the sequence seems to have come to an end, with the category ‘strange person’ attributed to Bethan cast as more positive than negative.

However, instead of letting the topic close, Violet continues the tease (Extract 4 below); and in doing this, she introduces two ageing-relevant expressions – ‘my age’ (l.21); and ‘as you get older’ (l.24) – to make a prediction about Bethan’s future state: she’ll be even worse by the time she’s Violet’s age (ll.21–22). Violet bases this prediction by universalising the experiences of ageing (with a ‘generic you’): ‘you get worse as you get older’ (l.24), ‘you go back to your childhood’ (ll.31–32), and ‘you act silly’ (l.45).

With the reference to ‘going back to your childhood’ Violet is arguably constructing ‘worse’ in line with the stereotype of the inverted-U model of older age, whereby older people lose behavioural restraint, act childishly (N. Coupland 2014 [2001]: 200). The ‘getting worse’ of ageing is a picture of decremental older age. However, being a ‘strange child’, and by extension a ‘strange person’, has already been imbued with positive connotations.

Furthermore, Violet infiltrates laughter particles and smiles into this expanded tease of Bethan (e.g., ll.21–22, 32, 45), which mitigates its ‘bite’. Then Bethan herself, also laughing, quickly appropriates and upgrades the categorisation of her future self: she’ll not just be much stranger, she’ll be ‘completely insane’ (ll.27, 29). Given that being ‘completely insane’ is being claimed as the consequence of being ‘even worse’ by the time she is Violet’s age, Bethan’s assertion has the effect of reinforcing her current categorial claim of being a ‘strange person’ now. Moreover, it is not only Bethan who appropriates the category for herself; a couple of seconds later Joellen does likewise, claiming ‘no hope for me then’ (ll.46–47). By claiming intensified future incumbency of the vague emerging category of ‘strange person’, Joellen, like Bethan, also implicitly asserts recognisable current incumbency of that category. So by the end of this sequence, by appropriating the (intensified) category for themselves in the future both Bethan and Joellen have implicitly claimed current (mitigated) incumbency of that category of ‘strange person’. By making such a claim, and with laughter, they have also transformed a possibly negative category, something related to decremental older age, into something, by definition, ‘claimable’, something valued in the here-and-now of the interaction, something closer to being eccentric or rather uninhibited, as Bethan was with her singing in the salon.

As far as Violet is concerned, most obviously she has adopted the role of authoritative commentator on ageing. With her assertion of ll.20–21 she has cast herself as considerably older than Bethan; and in producing her subsequent utterances about how ‘you’ are when you are older (‘worse’ (l.22); going ‘back to your childhood’ (ll.30–32); acting ‘silly’ (ll.45–51)) with unreduced epistemic authority (Heritage and Raymond 2005), Violet has cast herself as old enough to have the knowledge to make such unmitigated categorial claims. In neither case, though, is it clear that she is orientating to herself as ‘old’.

However, Violet alone has not, yet, in this sequence, claimed or demonstrated incumbency of the transformed and temporarily-made-valuable category, ‘strange person’. She could simply leave it. But given her knowledgeable assertions, along with her on-sight identity and her known chronological age of 75, and given the slippery lack of specificity of the ‘strange person’ category that has come into play, whose positive attributes are very similar to the attributes of the highly negative category of decremental older age, doing nothing opens Violet to the risk of being categorised as ‘old’, perhaps with decremental connotations. Alternatively, she could make claims similar to Bethan and Joellen, for example, by responding to Joellen with something like “no hope for you? Definitely no hope for me.” But of course she does not.

Rather, Violet’s way out of this dilemma is to launch her anecdote, that we examined as Extract 1. This displays her as currently engaging in activities that, in this sequential environment, are to be understood as bound to the vague category of ‘strange person’ who has ‘gone back to her childhood’ and is ‘acting silly’ or ‘doing silly things’; and these attributes and activities are cast as positive rather than indicators of decline. That is, she enacts current category incumbency rather than, like Bethan and Joellen, claiming current incumbency via assertions of intensified future incumbency. Furthermore, the story she tells, with its reliance on clever wordplay, also displays her as cognitively sharp, which distances her from any lurking notions of decremental older age. Nevertheless, by not adopting the same approach to claiming current incumbency as Bethan and Joellen, she has tacitly orientated to herself as too old to take their approach. That is, she displays her orientation to her older identity through her choice to tell her anecdote to claim current incumbency of the newly-valued category, rather than adopt another approach.