title: "And how old are you?": Age reference as an interpretative device in radio counselling.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Negotiations about problem definitions are a crucial part of psychotherapeutic and counselling work. In a conversation with a psychotherapist or a counsellor, the client's initial description of his or her trouble is transformed into an expert-informed problem formulation. This study aims to explicate how reasoning about troubles and life difficulties in a dialogue with a psychotherapist may be grounded in cultural knowledge about ageing.
  
  
  METHODS
  We draw upon ethnomethodology, and particularly on conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, to describe how age identities can be invoked in reasoning about explanations and solutions of psychological problems. The data consist of telephone conversations between a psychotherapist and people seeking help for their life difficulties on a Swedish radio programme.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our analysis shows how references to callers' age were used to position the callers as members of stage-of-life categories, in order to invoke expectations tied to the categories. The callers' positions in the life course served as an interpretative resource for negotiating understanding of the callers' troubles, and suggesting a normative description of their life situations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study explicates in interactional detail the interpretative use of cultural common-sense knowledge about the life course in the context of the specific institutional tasks of radio counselling.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, Lund University, P.O. Box 23, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. Electronic address: Nataliya.Thell@soch.lu.se.
authors.forename: Nataliya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Thell
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, Lund University, P.O. Box 23, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. Electronic address: Katarina.Jacobsson@soch.lu.se.
authors.forename: Katarina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jacobsson
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging; D003142:Communication; D003376:Counseling; D054521:Cultural Competency; D006801:Humans; D011613:Psychotherapy; D011845:Radio; D013548:Sweden
keywords: Age reference; Conversation analysis; Ethnomethodology; Life course; Membership categorisation; Radio counselling