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Social constructionism is principally concerned with explicating the processes by which people come to describe, explain, or otherwise account for the world in which they live including themselves (Gergen, 1985). What people take to be the world depends on how they approach it, and how they approach it depends on the social relationships of which they are a part. This makes social constructionism a particularly useful epistemology for investigating experiences of social isolation and rurality as both phenomena have highly subjective meanings. According to social constructionism, meaning is constructed out of our interaction with the world around us, and the shared understandings about our world that we construct socially through language influence how people present their experiences of these phenomena.

The relationship between meaning, experience and language is not simple or unidirectional. Language is not a neutral or mirror reflection of the world around us, nor is it a vehicle to transport thoughts from one person to another. Instead language is the site of knowledge and knowledge generation. We learn about the world through language, and then reproduce this knowledge ourselves through language. The concept of ageing has been socially constructed through the shared ideals about how one should behave at a certain point in their life and what their position in society should be. This ideal is then reproduced through people acting in accordance with these shared ideals. However, the degree to which a given form of shared

understanding prevails or is sustained across time is dependent on the variations of social processes such as communication, negotiation, conflict, and rhetoric (Gergen 1985). An example of this can be seen in the way the construction of ageing has changed in recent years. Only 50 years ago old age was, in the western world, seen as a time of physical deterioration, mental decline, dependency and withdrawal from society however current understandings of old age value good health, physical activity, independence and sociability.

Social constructionism as a theory of knowledge encourages a critical examination of how people know what they know about the world around them, all the taken-for-granted systems of meaning making that are operating, and what the material effects or consequences of these are. Social constructionism understands knowledge as specific to a particular time, place and culture (Burr, 2003), and constructions of meanings are known to change over time due to historical and social events. People have come to recognise particular organisations or categorisations as the natural, normal way that things should be. Shared understandings of practices and forms of ageing as natural or normal are formed in particular places, therefore constructions of ‘social isolation’ and ‘ageing’ in rural areas are important to investigate. Language derives its significance in human affairs from the way in which it functions within patterns of relationships (Gergen, 1994). When people state a belief or express an opinion, they are taking part in a conversation which has a purpose and in which participants have a stake. Hence, in order to make sense of what people say, we need to take into account the social context within which they speak. The vocabulary we have at our disposal enables and constrains how we can see and experience the world. People take up positions in society in accordance with accepted versions of social reality (Willig, 2003) which then govern which vocabulary can be drawn on. How people construct themselves and those around them may also vary across time and place therefore it is important to recognise that psychological understandings are embedded within our own culture (Gergen, 1985).

The ways of making sense of our surroundings and the ways we make sense of our experiences differ because the language through which we construct meaning is different and serves different purposes in different contexts. Therefore, there are many variations in accounts of

one phenomenon. Social constructionism is not concerned with which construction is the true answer but how that answer is used. It does not disenfranchise any possibilities, all theories are invited as potentially significant entries to the conversations of culture and no one theory is permitted to gain hegemony (Misra, 1993) Nevertheless drawing on one construction will serve a different purpose than drawing on another. Quantitative constructions of rural areas are advantageous for some purposes as they physically situate the place, locating and describing it objectively. Whereas socio-cultural constructions capture both the tangible and intangible aspects of locality by incorporating socio-spatial elements of setting without the assumption of universal rural settings or persons (Keating, & Phillips, 2008), drawing attention to the diversity of people and places.

Because knowledge is both constructed (from linguistic resources) and constructive (the way in which we understand the world around us) we can ask questions such as: why is the world linguistically represented in particular ways? What function or purpose does it serve? What are the consequences of this? Social constructionism provides an appropriate theoretical framing for this research as it accommodates a wide range of understandings of social isolation, rurality and ageing. Social constructionism also allows the voices of older people to be heard, with an emphasis on the ways in which they make sense of their experiences and the discourses surrounding ageing and social isolation, and the consequences of this for growing older in rural places.