Aphasic discourse analysis: The story so far

Abstract

This paper provides a critical review of the literature currently available relating to aphasic discourse. It outlines the major approaches which have been taken to analysis, differentiating the structuralist and functionalist frameworks in particular and discusses the resultant gap existing in aphasiology research between microstructural linguistic aspects of discourse and macrostructural/pragmatic aspects. Studies addressing lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and conversational aspects of discourse, as well as those focusing on specific aspects such as cohesion and text macrostructure are discussed and placed in a theoretical perspective. The different methodologies involved in the various studies are critically examined, with implications for using different elicitation techniques in particular discussed.

Verb use in aphasic and non-aphasic personal discourse: What is normal?

“…Such variability in both aphasic and normal speakers has been previously documented (Edwards & Bastiaanse, 1998;Webster et al, 2007). Thirdly, genre is known to exert a significant influence on outcome (Armstrong, 2000), and the QoL narrative genre provides broader linguistic opportunities than typical elicitation methods of verb naming, repetition, picture description, and story retell. In other words, given the opportunity afforded by the spontaneous and openended nature of the QoL questions to respond with verbs with a range of semantic properties, the aphasic speakers in the present study did so in equal measure.…”

“…Future research could additionally seek to explore the evaluative resources that individuals with aphasia employ, especially in contexts where evaluation is core to the genre. Whilst the analyses employed in this study do not permit one to judge the effectiveness of communication (Armstrong, 2000), future research would ideally consider discourse in terms of whether it is correctly used and/or effectively understood by the listener. Omission or inappropriate use was not recorded in our study, and future recording of such items is advocated given their informativeness (Webster et al, 2007).…”

“…The collective knowledge about verb production ability and deficit is influenced by factors relating to genre, sample size, aphasia type, determinants of fluency, and points of comparison. Firstly genre exerts a significant influence over verb production (Armstrong, 2000), thus attention to the nature of the elicitation tasks is important. A variety of tasks has been used, including single word naming from picture and video ; sentence production elicited from short stories of three sentences in length (Barde, Schwartz, & Boronat, 2006;Breedin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1998); procedural narratives (Ulatowska, North, & Haynes, 1981;Ulatowska, Doyel, Freedman-Stern, Macaluso-Haynes, & North, 1983); Cinderella narrative Saffran, Berndt & Schwartz, 1989;Webster, Franklin, & Howard, 2007); describing the experience of the stroke, job or last holiday (Armstrong, 2001;2005;Armstrong, Ciccone, Godecke, & Kok, 2011;Bastiaanse, 2011); and describing a happy event (Armstrong, 2005).…”

A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech

“…Moreover, these pictures are well established among aphasiology studies. Since different genres have been shown to elicit different verb forms (Armstrong, 2000;Olness, 2006), different elicitation tasks were preferred in order to maximize the variation in verbs. …”

Discourse in aphasia: An introduction to current research and future directions

“…Discourse abilities in aphasia have garnered more attention in recent years. Researchers have applied methods to evaluate discourse in adults with aphasia to better characterise their communication impairments (e.g., for review see Armstrong, 2000;Olness, Metteson, & Stewart, 2010;Stark, 2010;Ulatowska, Reyes, & Santos, 2010). Researchers have also investigated different methods for quantifying meaningful change in communication abilities of adults with aphasia that are often not detectable by standardised aphasia test batteries (e.g., Fox, Armstrong, & Boles, 2009;Goral & Kempler, 2009;Peach & Reuter, 2010).…”