We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
'You Should Get Yourself a Boyfriend' But 'Let's Not Get Serious': Communicating A Code of Romance in a Retirement Community.
- Authors
Alemán, Melissa Wood
- Abstract
A three-year ethnographic examination of a retirement community in a large Midwestern suburb points to an important deficit in our understanding of communication, aging and romantic relationships. This paper outlines a code of romance elderly residents utilized as a resource,for communicating their identities as men and women. Communication of this code had three major characteristics. First, residents expressed tension between wanting a physical, sexual relationship and believing such relations were inappropriate at their age. Second, residents dictated that romantic relationships follow a heterosexual script. Finally, residents tended to describe new romantic relationships in the here and now, editing romances of the distant past and projected future from their talk.
- Publication
Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 2003, Vol 4, p31
- ISSN
1745-9435
- Publication type
Academic Journal