A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do: Husbands as caregivers to their demented wives: A discourse analytic approach

In our discourse analytic study on 15 stories written by Finnish husbands w ho were giving or who had given care to their demented wives, we identifica tions articulations of four different ways to speak about one's actions and experiences as a family caregiver. We called these four modes of speech th e factual. familistic, agency, and destiny speech repertoires. Using differ ent speech repertoires in their narration, the husbands adopted the respect ive identities of an observer and reporter, a responsible caregiver, and in dependent actor, adn a victim or a drifter. the speech repertoires and iden tity constructions valid according to the contexts of the writers' speech a nd bore different functions for the writers' narration. The main finding of th study was the diversity of husbands' experiences of caregiving and the contextuality of the ways in which these experiences were talked about.