The clinical identification of frailty is increasingly thought to be important in countries with ageing populations. Understanding how older people labelled as frail make sense of this categorisation is therefore important. A number of recent studies have reported negative perceptions of the term among older people themselves. Building on this, we focus on how and why those assessed to be frail make sense of frailty as they do. We draw on 26a discourse analysis of situated interviews with 30 older people accessing emergency care in an English NHS hospital. Three interpretive repertoire pairs (Frailty is 26a bodily issue/frailty is about mind-set; Frailty is 26a negative experience/frailty is an inevitable experience; I'm not frail/I feel frail), identified across the participants' talk, are outlined and discussed in relation to discourses of the fourth age and precarity. We conclude that frailty is often seen in terms what others have referred to as ‘real’ old age and is linked to discourses of dependence and precarity.

在人口老龄化的国家，越来越多地认为虚弱的临床鉴定很重要。因此，了解被标记为虚弱的老年人如何理解这种分类是很重要的。最近的一些研究报告了老年人自己对这个词的负面看法。在此基础上，我们关注那些被评估为虚弱的人如何以及为什么像他们一样理解虚弱。我们利用对在英国 NHS 医院接受紧急护理的 30 名老年人的情景访谈进行的 26a 话语分析。三个解释性曲目对（虚弱是 26a 身体问题/虚弱是关于心态；虚弱是 26a 消极体验/虚弱是不可避免的经历；我不虚弱/我感觉虚弱），在参与者的谈话中确定，概述和讨论与第四时代和不稳定的话语有关。我们得出的结论是，虚弱通常被视为其他人所说的“真正的”老年，并且与依赖和不稳定的话语有关。