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3rd May: Jamie Williams, NTU

Wednesday 3rd May/mis Mai (week 11 of term): Jamie Williams, Nottingham Trent University

1pm in Room 3.62 of the John Percival Building on Colum Drive and via Zoom

Abstract

There has been a recent increased attention in discourse abilities in persons with aphasia (PWA), and much of the research on this topic has focused the notion of coherence (see, e.g. Armstrong, 2000; Pritchard et al., 2017). Broadly, coherence investigates how well individual utterances are linked together, and how well they adhere to the discourse goal. I will show in this talk that although recent work has provided important insights into the nature of discourse abilities of PWA, this research is guided by several assumptions that are open to challenge. Most importantly, existing methodologies make a strict divide between language function and language form, mirroring classical dichotomies that are central to many formal theories of language (for example those famously put forward by Chomsky, 1965). This results in a perspective on aphasiology that leads one to prioritise communicative deficits in clinical data – where the focus is solely on the individual with a brain injury and holds them against collected linguistic norms. I discuss an alternative perspective, one that places functional linguistic inquiry, specifically a systemic-functional linguistic approach, at its heart (Ferguson et al., 2017). Drawing upon Halliday’s (1978) distinction between viewing language either as a rule or a resource, I will discuss how taking a functional perspective allows us (1) to prioritize how PWA use available resources to create meaning even if this differs from how neurotypical speakers would, and (2) shift our focus from a purely intrapersonal domain to an interpersonal one, looking at all parties in a communicative exchange, following the work of Perkins (2007). I exemplify this approach by discussing some recent research into coherence in the narratives of individuals with anomic aphasia. Narratives by 14 persons with anomic aphasia and 14 matched controls were collected from AphasiaBank (MacWhinney et al., 2011), and were analysed in terms of their clause complex structure (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2014), expanding the work of Armstrong (1992). This allows us to see how ideas in longer narratives are connected using lexical, grammatical, and prosodic resources, and the functions these links have in discourse. I will argue that discourse coherence is manifested differently in narratives of persons with aphasia. Although they are able to signal the same range of discourse functions, lexical and grammatical differences mean that they place more emphasis on their conversational partner to make these connections, shifting the interpretative responsibility across the interpersonal domain, as a result of their altered potential for meaning-making. What we see is less of a discourse impairment per se, but instead an adaptation to the respective needs of all conversational partners.

 

References

Armstrong, E. 1992. ‘Clause complex relations in aphasic discourse: A longitudinal case study.’ Journal of Neurolinguistics, 7(4), pp. 261-275.

Armstrong, E. 2000. ‘Aphasic discourse analysis: The story so far.’ Aphasiology, 14(9), pp. 875-892.

Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of a Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ferguson, A., E. Spencer, and E. Armstrong. 2017. ‘Systemic Functional Linguistics and Clinical Linguistics.’ In: T. Bartlett and G. O’Grady (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Routledge, pp. 491-505.

Halliday, M.A.K. Language as a Social Semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K., and C.M.I.M. Matthiessen. 2014. Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. London: Routledge.

MacWhinney, B., D. Fromm, M. Forbes, and A. Holland. 2011. ‘AphasiaBank: Methods for studying discourse.’ Aphasiology, 25, pp. 1286-1307.

Perkins, M. 2007. Pragmatic Impairment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pritchard, M., K. Hilari, N. Cocks, and L. Dipper. 2017. ‘Measuring the quality of discourse information measures in aphasia.’ International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 52(6), pp. 689-732.

 

This seminar will be hybrid although Jamie will be present and we encourage in-person attendance in Room 3.62 of the John Percival Building. To join online click here.