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The qualitative analysis of naturally occurring discourse in neurogenic communication disorders, specifically in dementia studies, has experienced recent burgeoning interest from wide-ranging disciplines. This multidisciplinarity has been exciting, but has added contextual confusion. This book advances the study of discourse in dementia by systematically exploring and applying different approaches to the same free conversational data sets, collected and transcribed by the authors. The applied methodologies and theories comprise a useful sourcebook for students, researchers, and practitioners alike.
Alison Wray notes that “Alzheimer’s Disease affects language in many different ways. Directly, language processing is undermined by damage to the language areas of the brain. Indirectly, language is compromised by short term memory loss, distortions in perception, and disturbed semantic representation . . . All of this makes AD an obvious focus of interest for linguists and in particular, those interested in the field of pragmatics – yet a striking amount of what is published about AD language is written by non-linguists. AD language is independently researched in at least psychology, neuroscience, sociology, clinical linguistics and nursing. Each discipline has its own methods, theories, assumptions and values, which affect the research questions asked, the empirical approach taken in answering them, and how the evidence is interpreted. Without a more reliable holistic picture informed by linguistic and applied linguistic theory and methods, approaches to diagnosis and care risk being constrained, and may result in a less than satisfactory experience for all those whose daily life involves the direct or indirect experience of AD.” This book is an attempt to address some of the above issues noted by bringing together a group of researchers whose work focuses on interaction in the context of dementia. The authors represent the fields of linguistics, clinical linguistics, nursing, and speech pathology, and each chapter draws on methods associated with discourse analysis and pragmatics to examine how people with dementia utilize language in the presence of cognitive decline. In addition, the book seeks to generate academic discussion on how researchers can move forward to focus greater attention on this topic. In particular, this collection will inspire researchers involved in mainstream theoretical linguistics and pragmatics to turn their attention to the discourse of dementia and investigate what it has to say about our knowledge of language theories, and, in addition, to challenge what we know about ourselves as subjective beings.
This book deals with the narrative discourse--specifically lifestories--of 16 patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD). It attempts to understand the discourse of these patients in contextual terms. Thus far, the dominant explanation for "incoherence" in AD speech has been largely provided by research in psycholinguistics, much of which has understood AD speech in terms of the progressively deteriorating nature of the disease. This study provides a complementary view by examining ways in which some social factors--audiences, setting, and time--influence the extensiveness and meaningfulness of AD talk. By offering both an examination of interactions across the data as well as analyzing particular cases in detail, this unusual study attempts to juxtapose some general insights regarding AD discourse with case-specific ones. Sociolinguistic analyses of the data demonstrate how certain audiences and particular settings set in motion discourse activities that either facilitate the patients' ability to recall their pasts or impede it. This analysis also includes a critical look at the researcher's contribution in negotiating and reinforcing these activities. Ethnographic details about the social worlds of some of these patients shed light on how larger social contexts at least indirectly contribute to exacerbating the patients' conditions or stabilizing them. The analyses of both context and language provides a more global understanding of the Alzheimer experience. This study also discusses some interactional strategies by which professionals can begin to engage AD patients in meaningful talk as well as ways by which they can better "hear" AD patients' cues at narrating. Throughout, this book underscores the need to factor in social factors when making assessments regarding AD patients' communicative abilities.
Application of analytic discourse techniques to clinical practice is relatively recent. This book's contributors begin with the notion that systematic examination of discourse provides a rich source of data for describing the complex relationships among language, social context, and the cognitive processes that underlie discourse comprehension and production. Evidence is provided that when discourse is studied across different clinical populations, analysis yields an optimal opportunity for developing dynamic models of brain and language that more thoroughly account for the complexity of language use in social contexts. Accordingly, studies presented in this volume have a dual focus -- to examine the implications of discourse research on neurolinguistic theories and to evaluate the contribution of discourse analysis to understanding the clinical status of patients with brain damage. As such, this volume reports patterns of preserved and impaired discourse behavior in normal adults and in different adult clinical populations. It also describes numerous tasks designed to elicit a variety of discourse genres and a host of techniques created to describe how subjects order information and relate ideas across sentences. In addition, it includes numerous abstract units and linguistic devices targeted to examine those aspects of discourse that govern cohesion, organization, and topic manipulation. This volume is unique because it presents both theoretical and clinical papers that examine a variety of communication pathologies. Clinicians often report dissatisfaction with formal test batteries in that results are often at variance with clinical observation of performance in real life situations. To address this concern, this work proposes methods for examining discourse that move the examiner closer to naturalistic sampling. The research presented demonstrates that discourse analysis provides clinically significant information that contributes to the understanding of the cognitive, linguistic, and social status of people with communication disorders. These studies also offer a framework to support continuously evolving diagnostic and treatment paradigms for adults with neurological communication pathologies.
Fourteen contributors present different approaches to conversational analysis. Their analyses of the B-K conversation, which appears as an appendix, will present a challenge to the reader who enjoys weighing the relative merits of each, and who seeks creative solutions to the problems of face-to-face interactions. The book also serves a useful function in getting an extensively transcribed and analyzed conversation into the public domain. `...an excellent resource for scholars interested in the growing area of conversation and coherence as a part of the total study of human communication.' -- Journal of Communication, Winter 1985
This book investigates the ways in which context shapes how cognitive challenges and strengths are navigated and how these actions impact the self-esteem of individuals with dementia and their conversational partners. The author examines both the language used and face maintenance in everyday social interaction through the lens of epistemic discourse analysis. In doing so, this work reveals how changes in cognition may impact the faces of these individuals, leading some to feel ashamed, anxious, or angry, others to feel patronized, infantilized, or overly dependent, and still others to feel threatened in both ways. It further examines how discursive choices made by healthy interactional partners can minimize or exacerbate these feelings. This path-breaking work will provide important insights for students and scholars of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, medical anthropology, and health communication.
This open access book provides a comprehensive perspective on the concept of ageism, its origins, the manifestation and consequences of ageism, as well as ways to respond to and research ageism. The book represents a collaborative effort of researchers from over 20 countries and a variety of disciplines, including, psychology, sociology, gerontology, geriatrics, pharmacology, law, geography, design, engineering, policy and media studies. The contributors have collaborated to produce a truly stimulating and educating book on ageism which brings a clear overview of the state of the art in the field. The book serves as a catalyst to generate research, policy and public interest in the field of ageism and to reconstruct the image of old age and will be of interest to researchers and students in gerontology and geriatrics.
How are individual and social ideas of late-onset dementia shaped and negotiated in film, literature, the arts, and the media? And how can the symbolic forms provided by popular culture be adopted and transformed by those affected in order to express their own perspectives? This international and interdisciplinary volume summarizes central current research trends and opens new theoretical and empirical perspectives on dementia in popular culture. It includes contributions by internationally renowned scholars from the humanities, social and cultural gerontology, age(ing) studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and bioethics. Contributions by Lucy Burke, Marlene Goldman, Annette Leibing and others.
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.