| Abstract [eng] |
According to the ethnolinguistic vitality theory, the strength of social groups (which can be extended to social categories), apart from other factors, is defined by the institutional support and especially by the representation in the media. The goal of this paper is to explore the portrayal of the elderly represented in Lithuanian media. 1106 publications of year 2007 mentioning elderly people on the internet portal Delfi in Lithuanian language were studied. The hits with the keywords old, elderly, pensioner, old age, ageing, old man (woman), etc. were analysed. Some one third of the selected texts were from the same portal Delfi, others were extracted from regional newspapers Klaipeda and Kauno diena, news agency ELTA and other sources. The analysis was carried out by using content analysis software Hamlet: establishing the frequency of the most commonly used keywords. Furthermore, with the help of cluster analysis the contexts related to elderly people were singled out. Earlier research work has found that the word pensioner that has a connotation of a burden to the society prevailed when referring to the aged people. According to my findings, more neutral words old man, old woman are used when referring to the age of the person or the family status. This difference is explained as evidence of the changes in the public discourse during the last two years. Differently from the trends in the USA, the representation of women in the analysed material was more frequent than of men. In the cluster text analysis the relationship between the keywords pajam* (income) and senatv* (old age) was detected. The fact that elderly were not mentioned in the publications discussing pension issues demonstrates that their role is underestimated in the Lithuanian society. |
