Managers and eldercare: Three critical, language-based approaches

Critical, language-based analytic approaches offer tools to explore how we use language to construct identities, roles and relationships, to represent realities, and to challenge or support existing social orders. In this pap er we use language-based analyses to explore the issue of work and eldercar e. We identify the epistemologies, mechanics and insights of three language -based approaches: functional grammar, discourse analysis, and deconstructi on. The texts analysed are drawn from depth interviews with male and female managerial level employees in Southern Ontario who provide care for aging relatives. Analyses target (1) managers' reactions to the "eldercare" label and (2) how managers balance work commitments and caregiving commitments. We focus on managers because their role in eldercare has received little at tention in either the organizational or the gerontological literature; and yet they may be in a position to effect institutional change.