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https://spectator.com/article/the-doctor-will-patronise-you-now/

The prize, for the moment, for the ludicrously infantile goes to the doctor dealing with an elderly but utterly compos mentis friend. He was suffering from an ill–fitting catheter, which was causing a constant and painful intimate irritation. ‘So!’ the doctor began. ‘We’re having a little bit of trouble with our lower tummy, are we?’ ‘I wanted to ask,’ my friend said, ‘is that the bit of the lower tummy that daddies put into mummies when they love them very, very much?’

There has been some interest among students of linguistics for many years about the revoltingly patronising ways in which medical professionals speak to perfectly capable old people; it even has its own technical label, ‘elderspeak’. Related to the babytalk or ‘motherese’ with which adults address tiny children, elderspeak has been found to indulge in excessive use of the first-person plural; to address perfect strangers with inappropriately intimate vocatives such as ‘sweetheart’; to avoid ordinary instructions in the form of the imperative; constantly to use question tags at the end of sentences; a sing-song tone and a raised voice, irrespective of hearing capacity; and to relish a markedly infantilised choice of words. Students of linguistics, since elderspeak was first identified in 1981, generally regard it as a linguistic power play, putting capable people in a position of subordination and removing choice. To an equal, you might say: ‘Stand up now, please.’ Translated into elderspeak, you would say: ‘Let’s see if we can stand up, you lovely man, let’s have a peep at your tootsies, shall we?’

https://archive.ph/GDj3M