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Abstract
Despite the well documented pragmatic deficits that can arise subsequent to Right Hemisphere Brain Damage (RHBD), few researchers have directly studied everyday conversations involving people with RHBD. In recent years, researchers have begun applying Conversation Analysis (CA) to the everyday talk of people with aphasia. This research programme has provided novel insights into the complex inter-relationship between impairment, language use, and interactional organization. This paper will argue that the detailed, inductive approach of CA is well suited to investigating pragmatic communication disorders resulting from RHBD, and will help to elaborate previous findings about RHBD and conversation. In particular, this paper will review and discuss previous investigations of conversation after RHBD, and put forward arguments relating to how CA might be applied to talk-in-interaction involving people with RHBD.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
Notes
1. Although a contrast has been drawn here, the scope of the terms ‘transaction’ and ‘interaction’ is somewhat unclear. This is especially so in everyday talk, where sequences of turns are often not clearly supporting ‘information transfer’ more, less or equally than ‘social affiliation’.
2. A reviewer insightfully observed that this distinction likely has neurological and/or cognitive correlates, and that this is an arena to which CA is not directly sensitive. How the kinds of analyses that CA generates can be ‘married’ with current models of brain/mind functioning is an inordinately complex and fascinating issue; and one that researchers working with communication disorders might be uniquely placed to investigate (see Schegloff, Citation2003a; Citationb). In the context of the present discussion, it is argued that CA's potential contribution will initially take the form of data-driven elaborations of how the conduct of people with RHBD can be viewed in light of various local interactional contingencies.
3. This term does not do justice the interactional functions of these objects. As well, Brady et al.’s (Citation2003) grouping of objects like ‘uh’ and ‘um’ with objects like ‘y'know’, and some of Van Lancker Sidtis and Postman's (Citation2006) categorizations of formulaic expressions appear susceptible to the arguments presented about quantification in this paper.
4. See Beeke et al. (Citation2007b) or Schegloff (Citation2007) for transcription conventions.
5. By deny access to the actions embodied in these turns, the research assistant could arguably be displaying more of a pragmatic deficit than his ‘impaired’ partner.
6. It should be noted, however, that detailed, inductive investigation of the sort proposed in this paper will be well served by an open approach to analysis. That is, in the context of topic, it should not be assumed that the occurrence of off-topic turns is necessarily pathological.
7. A TCU can be defined as the linguistic and paralinguistic materials that could potentially comprise a turn-at-talk, and can be as simple as a single lexical unit, sound or gesture, or as complex as a main clause with subordinate clauses (Schegloff, Citation1996).
8. This extract is drawn from a previously unpublished set of recordings held by the first author.
9. The argument put forward here is essentially akin to the arguments put forward by Maynard (Citation1980) in relation to topic change but, whereas Maynard (Citation1980) focuses on resolving problems related to speakership, the present paper focuses on the broader notion of progressivity.