Negotiating Communicative Access in Practice: A Study of a Memoir Group for People With Aphasia

Abstract

Resulting from stroke or brain injury, aphasia affects individuals' ability to produce and comprehend language, but it also creates profound social changes, limiting individuals' opportunities to communicate or to be seen as capable of communication. To address these challenges, the field of communicative sciences and disorders (CSD) has sought to ensure "communicative access" by reducing barriers to communication. This article, through an analysis of the communicative practices of participants in a memoir group for people with aphasia, develops a nuanced conception of communicative access as a process of negotiation across individuals and modes and not just as a process of reducing barriers. The study shows, specifically, that rather than the mere presence of multiple semiotic resources enabling communicative access, individuals enact access by flexibly shifting between modes to take advantage of various kinds of affordances that best suit their needs. This willingness to use modes in atypical or nonnormative ways importantly challenges the very idea of "normal" communication. The theory of communicative access developed in this article melds (a) a CSD understanding of communication as social and tied inextricably to identity with (b) a disability studies conception of access as an ongoing, negotiated

Visual Embodied Actions in Interview-Based Writing Research: A Methodological Argument for Video

“…In their collaborative research, this flexibility extended to instant-message exchanges, email correspondence over months, and videorecorded in-person interviews. In contrast, videorecording was essential for Miller (2019), whose participants included people with aphasia. She and her interviewees did not just talk and gesture; they also wrote and drew.…”

“…There are a number of ways to protect participants’ identities while preserving the focal phenomena. To anonymize still images, researchers can create line/cartoon drawings by hand (e.g., Clayson, 2018, p. 178) or by applying a filter, blur eyes or faces (e.g., Miller, 2019), convert the image to a negative, or, as Flewitt (2006) illustrates, blur the whole image by reducing the pixel count. To anonymize videos, researchers can create “x-ray” or “negative” versions of video, blur faces—YouTube’s video editor has an “add blur” feature—or convert the video to an animated cartoon.…”

“…Adapting the consent form’s readability to one’s audience has always been an important way to enact transparency. Miller (2019) even created an illustrated consent form for her participants, who, as mentioned above, included people with aphasia. To a similar extent, providing visual examples of approaches to anonymizing images can help researchers more clearly communicate how data could be represented to participants—and can even allow participants to choose among several options.…”

A Taxonomy of Life Writing: Exploring the Functions of Meaningful Self-Sponsored Writing in Everyday Life

“…For instance, as of May 2023, in the last 17 issues, Written Communication has published 91 articles, addressing educational contexts (63.7%), professional/workplace contexts (13.2%), methodological or theoretical issues (13.2%), public rhetoric (6.5%), and self-sponsored writing (4.3%). These articles focused on self-sponsored writing include advocacy writing (Walsh, 2019), writing with aphasia (Miller, 2019), and religious literate activity (Ware, 2021). The Meaningful Writing Project (Eodice et al, 2016) likewise calls attention to the blind spot in researchers’ view when it comes to university contexts: “What counts as literate activity [in higher education] is so narrow that we miss much, perhaps most, of what makes composing in our students’ literacy lives (in all our lives) so rich, so full, and so meaningful” (p. 134).…”