The Young and the Ageing: ethical aspects in the representation of age groups in healthcare websites : the cases off Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

Australia, New Zealand and South Africa are three English-speaking countries from the southern hemisphere of the world. Yet, while the populations of the former two have been steadily ageing for the last twenty years , that of the latter has undergone the opposite process , the gap between the younger and the elderly being further enlarged by the dramatic incidence of AIDS-related mortality among its working-age population . These noticeable demographic trends resulted in all three countries implementing age-specific policies – as can be easily ascertained by browsing the respective national healthcare systems’ websites – with Australia going as far as having an appointed Minister for Ageing. Indeed, websites have now established themselves worldwide as an indispensable interface for communication between institutions and citizens, and healthcare is no exception. The research presented in this proposal is part of a larger project in progress at the Universities of Milan and Varese (Italy) called “Ideological, ethical and emotional aspects of English medical discourse”, investigating the composite relationship between healthcare, ethics and the web . Specifically, the present paper would like to explore how age issues are communicated by Australian, New Zealand and South African healthcare institutions via the web, focussing in particular on the ethical aspects typically connected to them. The outlined analysis will be carried out by referring to current discourse analytical perspectives within a systemic functional communicative framework, with the ultimate aim of providing possible insights into (in)effective institution-to-citizen web communication of ethically-marked medical topics. Select bibliography - FAIRCLOUGH, N. (2003), Analysing Discourse: Textual analysis for social research, London, New York, Routledge. - GARZONE G., RUDVIN M. (2003), Domain-specific English and Language Mediation in a Professional and Institutional Setting, Milano, Arcipelago. - GARZONE, G. & S. SARANGI EDS (forthcoming), Discourse, Ideology and Ethics in Specialised Communication, Peter Lang. - GREGO, K. (forthcoming), “Medical English and institutional communication: linguistic accessibility to ethically-sensitive topics in national health systems’ websites – UK vs. USA”. In Proceedings of the conference I International Conference on Language and Healthcare, Alicante, Spain, 24-26 October 2007. - GREGO, K. & A. VICENTINI (forthcoming), “Building South African web identity: health care information for citizens vs. foreigners”. In Proceedings of the conference Discourse and Identity in Specialized Communication, Gargnano del Garda (Italy), 25-26 June 2007. - HALLIDAY, M.A.K. (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London/Baltimore, Md., USA, Edward Arnold. - STATISTICS SOUTH AFRICA (2006), Adult mortality (age 15-64) based on death notification data in South Africa: 1997-2004. Report no. 03-09-05 (2006), Pretoria, Statistics South Africa. - UNITED NATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS, POPULATION DIVISION (2007), World Population Prospects. The 2006 Revision, CD-ROM Edition, Extended Dataset, New York. Data on Australia available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=36&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008). Data on New Zealand available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=554&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008). Data on South Africa available on http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_country_prof_results.asp?crID=710&cpID=21 (consulted on 13 February 2008).