Self-directed speech and dialogue in dementia care: the potential of co-participants’ contributions

Abstract

Purpose: Dementia is associated with an ongoing decline in language function, involving both language production and comprehension. Maintaining a conversation with persons with dementia may be challenging. In this study, we investigate how the contributions of professional caregivers affect the linguistic contributions of the speaker with dementia.

Methods: This is a conversation analytic case study of one individual with dementia. The data are drawn from a five-hour video corpus collected at a Swedish speaking care facility in Finland.

Results: In comparing self-directed speech and dialogue, the results show how professional caregivers can induce change in the linguistic and interactional behaviors of a person with dementia.

Conclusions: Introducing an interactional perspective to self-directed speech and dialogue, this study provides new insights into the notion of a “good conversation” in dementia care.

Keywords:

• Dementia
• interaction
• conversation analysis
• caregiving
• self-directed speech

Transcription symbols [29]

(but)	=	parenthesized words are possible hearings
(-)	=	not hearable
[but	=	overlapping speech
( ())	=	transcriber’s comments
but	=	emphasis
*but*	=	silent voice
=but	=	no gap between two lines
(mt)	=	clicking sound
<but>	=	talk at a slower pace than the surrounding talk
*but*	=	smiling voice
-	=	cut-off (bu-)
:	=	lengthening of a sound (bu:t)
↑	=	rising intonation before unit
?	=	rising intonation after unit
(.)	=	very small gap, less than 0.2 seconds
(0.6)	=	silences timed in 10ths of a second

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants in the 7th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (November 2017), the editors of this volume, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also wish to thank Anna Johansson, our research assistant, for aiding us with the quantitative pre-analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camilla Lindholm

Camilla Lindholm, PhD, is an acting professor of Scandinavian Languages at the Department of FInno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Her interest is conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

Camilla Wide

Camilla Wide, PhD, is a professor of Scandinavian Languages at the School of Languages and Translation Studies, University of Turku, Turku, Finland. Her interest is spoken language, grammar and discourse.