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Abstract
Background: Problems with intersubjectivity (i.e., mutual understanding) are prevalent during interactions involving people with aphasia. The linguistic restrictions imposed by aphasia mean that conversation partners must often assist with repairing intersubjective problems if they are to be resolved efficaciously. However, conversation partners can resist participation in repair activities. This may have serious negative implications for how people with aphasia participate in conversation.
Aims: This study uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine responses to problematic talk produced by people with aphasia. It focuses on three alternatives to initiating, completing, or pursuing repair: receipting responses, accounting responses, and “other” responses. The interactional organisation and consequences of these responses are described.
Methods & Procedures: Three people with aphasia and nine of their familiar conversation partners were video-recorded during their everyday conversations. Approximately 9.5 hr of recordings was collected. Ninety-seven responses were identified in this data set and analysed using collection-based conversation-analytic practices.
Outcomes & Results: Receipting responses register that the person with aphasia has produced a turn, but provide little support for the action implemented by the turn. They do not index problems with intersubjectivity and often result in the problematic talk being abandoned. Accounting responses index problems with intersubjectivity, but do not work towards resolving them. Instead, they deal with why an appropriate response to the problematic talk cannot be delivered, and which party is responsible for its absence. “Other” responses comprise a more eclectic category. One type—non-serious responses—is examined. Non-serious responses take the appearance of repair, but ultimately delay authentic repair attempts.
Conclusions: The responses examined can have negative consequences for the participation of people with aphasia, restricting their ability to implement social action, and making relevant their status as linguistically incompetent. However, they can also help with navigating the sensitive environments created by problems with intersubjectivity. Interaction-focused interventions might focus on these practices in addition to repair practices when attempting to improve how communication breakdown is addressed. CA and qualitative interviewing are well suited to future explorations of how conversation partners decide that they will not initiate, complete, or pursue repair.
Notes
1. Perhaps contrary to expectations, Laakso (Citation1997) found that people with fluent, Wernicke-type aphasia ably and frequently initiated self-repair. The self-repair practices used by people with aphasia have the potential to reveal important information about language processing and aphasia, and deserve much more investigative attention than they have so far received (though, see Laakso, Citation1997; and Wilkinson, Gower, Beeke, and Maxim, Citation2007).
2. There were also instances of “composite” responses, which involve one response type being combined with another response type or action in the same turn (e.g., receipting + accounting, cf. Schegloff, Citation2007).
3. Some actions strongly constrain what can follow them (see Schegloff, Citation2007). For example, uttering an invitation narrows the kinds of actions that can be subsequently expected (acceptance vs. rejection). By contrast, Gardner (Citation2001) demonstrated that this variety of mm has “zero projection”; it does not strongly constrain the actions that can be expected in immediately subsequent talk.
4. The overlap at 24 and 25 also possibly contributed to the lack of immediate uptake.
5. Taken in isolation, it seems possible that Betty is referring to bingo anywhere, rather than bingo specifically at the nursing home. However, in the talk that follows she identifies a staff member at the nursing home who is involved with bingo activities, so this hearing seems unlikely.
6. See Barnes, Candlin, and Ferguson (Citation2013) for further analysis of the topic initiation presented in this extract.
7. The precise character of this response is difficult to convey. Unlike receipting responses, which remain rather neutral and removed from the empirical details of the problematic talk, Carol’s high pitch and frowning imbues this token with a negative evaluative edge. Moreover, it is akin to a laugh in that it seems to be viscerally reactive to the inappositeness of Russell’s talk.
8. Notice also the association between crime and legal help at 13 and 17.
9. Of course, this may also reflect people with aphasia recognising that their turn has failed, and choosing to move on (cf. Rhys, Citation2013).
10. In addition, it should be noted that minimal continuing responses (e.g., mm hm) have been encouraged in interaction-focused interventions as a way of promoting speaking turns for people with aphasia (e.g., Wilkinson, Lock, Bryan, & Sage, Citation2011). As noted above, these responses are useful when the turn or action being produced by the person with aphasia is in progress; when it is still emerging. Minimal recipient responses produced in these sorts of environments were excluded from the present data set because of their general appositeness.