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Two qualitative surveys carried out in retirement homes in Luxembourg and France are used to study how excluding certain aspects of carer discourse can on one hand lead to a denial of recognition for carers themselves, and on the other prevent residents from making their environment into a real home. The article highlights the way even the possibility of verbal expression is subject to norms, since some types of speech are excluded and thus resurface elsewhere within the physical and social space of the retirement home, or must be made explicit by speakers in authority. Further to this, norms of content tend to impose a univocal interpretation of certain ways of speaking; interactions between carers and residents are subject to a process of regulation through discourse. These two forms of discursive regulation on the part of carers have consequences for both carers and residents.