How parents with aphasia deal with children’s resistance to requests

ABSTRACT

Negotiating bedtime or table manners with children can be challenging, probably even more so for parents with aphasia. This study aims to explore how parents with aphasia deal with children’s resistance to requests in everyday interactions. It examines the interactional practices of parents with aphasia and their consequences for deontic authority (the right to direct another person’s future action). Using conversation analysis, I conducted a collection-based study of request sequences in 10 hours of video recordings involving three parents with aphasia (two with mild and one with severe aphasia). Two different types of child resistance following a parental request were analysed: passive resistance (indicated by the child’s inaction) and active resistance (indicated by the child’s attempt to bargain or give an account for not doing the requested action). It is shown that all three parents with aphasia respond to passive resistance with pursuits, such as ‘hey’ and other prompts. However, while the two parents with greater linguistic resources deal with active resistance by seeking compliance with counterarguments and by cautiously upgrading their deontic rights, such fine-tuning is not present when the parent with more limited linguistic resources deals with his child’s resistance. This parent uses intrusive physical practices, gestures, increased volume and repetition. This analysis offers insights into practices that appear to affect the ability of these parents with aphasia to negotiate with their children and thus engage in parenting and participate in family life. In order to be able to offer support when engaging with children as desired by parents with aphasia, it is important to gain further insights into how aphasia can affect the organisation of everyday family life.

KEYWORDS:

• Parents with aphasia
• negotiation
• requests
• directives
• deontic authority
• conversation analysis

Introduction

Family conversations are the vehicle for parenting. Through such conversations, a child internalises cultural and social knowledge, rules and behaviour. Parents try to convey this through for example requests for action, such as ‘go to bed’, and ‘sit still’ (for example Craven & Potter, 2010). Yet, children frequently resist such requests and parents have to deal with this resistance. Consequently, family life is often shaped by the negotiation of requests.

Negotiating requests includes negotiation of deontic authority (the right to direct another person’s future action) (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012). Usually, a parent-child interaction is characterised by asymmetrical authority (Heller, 2011). This authority imbalance is not a priori confined to parents and children. Their roles are constituted in the interaction through their behaviour and the behaviour manifests their social roles within the family (Ochs & Taylor, 1992). The ability to display parental authority by interacting competently, for example by negotiating requests, is important because parenting involves maintenance of the asymmetrical social order. Typically, parents have a broader linguistic repertoire for engaging in this than children themselves (Kent, 2012). They try to convince a child to do a requested action with careful counterarguments (M. H. Goodwin, 2006) and are commonly the ones who do most argumentation work (Bova & Arcidiacono, 2013). The way parents deal with child resistance is thus both important for the role of parents as well as for children’s socialisation.

Although it is well known that aphasia affects the entire family, not just a person with aphasia (Grawburg et al., 2019), there are few studies addressing parenting with aphasia (for example Manning et al., 2021; Ryan & Pitt, 2018). These studies document that parents with aphasia wish for support to engage with their children and that families with aphasia strive to communicate well, which contributes to better living with aphasia (Brown et al., 2011). However, we lack insights into how aphasia can affect the organisation of ordinary, everyday family life to be able to offer relevant support.

As a first attempt to improve our understanding of the influence of aphasia on typical conversational activities of families, the present study examines how parents with aphasia deal with their children’s resistance to requests. Little is known about the communicative practices of parents with aphasia when responding to children’s resistance to requests or how negotiation is conducted in situations where a child continues to resist and a parent with aphasia works towards compliance. The following is an overview of negotiation within request sequences and the consequences for deontic authority in typical interaction, parent-child interaction, and interactions of parents with aphasia.

Negotiation and deontic authority

Intergenerational disputes resulting from requests are recurrent actions in family interactions and therefore a fruitful field for analysing the unfolding of parent-child negotiation. The present study examines one type of request, namely ‘requests for actions’ or short requests (Tse Crepaldi, 2017, p. 21). Other request types, such as requests for objects, are beyond the scope of this study. Different types of requests take various linguistic formats, from interrogatives (‘Could you go to bed now?’) and imperatives (‘Go to bed now!’) to noticings (‘It’s bedtime.’) (Kent, 2011). They have in common that they are ‘communicative projects’ (Luckmann, 1995, p. 180) that attempt ‘to get someone to do something’ (M. H. Goodwin, 2006, p. 517) and require an immediate physical action in response. Requestees orient to requests as first actions by complying with or resisting them. The present study focuses on the extended negotiation sequence that ensues after resistance.

Analysis reveals that compliance responses are produced quickly to progress the initiated action (Schegloff, 2007). Following compliance, the third action is the requester’s acknowledgement or a next action (Zinken et al., 2020). Requestees use a variety of formats to express resistance. These resistance formats are often prefaced with features such as hesitation, delaying and hedging as well as the requestee might account for non-compliance (Pomerantz, 1984). If the request is not met, requesters may deal with the resistance by working towards compliance in an unfolding extended negotiation sequence. Thus, negotiating requests involves three interactional actions: making a request, resisting the request, and the process of dealing with the resistance.

Requests are attempts to direct the future actions of another person. As such, they involve some claim to the right to do so, which is referred to as deontic authority (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012). Studies of deontic authority draw on Curl and Drew’s (2008) notions of entitlement and contingency. For example, when a speaker phrases their request as an imperative (‘Go to bed!’), they are claiming high entitlement and thus power to demand the action of going to bed. In contrast, modal constructions such as ‘can you/could you’ orient to the contingency that the interlocutor may resist the action or be unable to perform the action (Rossi, 2015). Formats such as ‘I wonder if … ’ mitigate a request by allocating to the requestee even more power to decide. Furthermore, deontic authority may be up- or downgraded using prosody, embodiment, or hedges, such as ‘a bit’ (for example M. H. Goodwin, 2006). Speakers can increase and decrease their deontic authority by shaping their turns with words, phrases and syntax that heighten or lower their rights to decide about the future action. Claiming high deontic authority, by increasing one’s entitlement or reducing one’s orientation to contingencies, does not guarantee compliance. A requestee may still refuse to comply with a request, and then the requester is faced with the dilemma of how to get the requestee to perform the desired action. While previous literature used the term requests to refer to requests claiming low entitlement and the term directives for requests claiming high entitlement (Craven & Potter, 2010), the present study uses the term request for requests claiming both high and low entitlement because the distinction made in previous studies seems a ‘grammatical distinction without a practical difference’ (Antaki & Kent, 2012, p. 878). Entitlement and contingency can be negotiated in an unfolding request sequence. Authority, then, is a variable power that requesters and requestees negotiate.

The basic structure of parental requests to children is similar to requests from adults to adults (for example Aronsson & Cekaite, 2011). With regard to children’s resistance, parents may reissue the request (M. H. Goodwin, 2006). In data from Craven and Potter (2010) and M. H. Goodwin et al. (2012), parents respond to their children’s passive resistance (indicated by children’s inaction) by incrementing their requests with ‘please’, or ‘okay?’. Children may also respond with active resistance such as attempts to bargain (‘not yet’), accounts (‘I had a bath yesterday’) or pleading (‘please’). They are usually met with refusal and accounting by parents (Aronsson & Cekaite, 2011; M. H. Goodwin et al., 2012). Together with these verbal formats, parents may also deal physically with their children’s resistance by adjusting their children’s bodies by, for example, taking a child’s foot off the table, also referred to as control formation (C-formation) or shepherding (Cekaite, 2010, 2015). In terms of calibrating the degree of deontic authority, studies show that when parents’ requests are met with resistance, they increase their entitlement and lower the children’s contingency during negotiation sequences (for example from a modal request ‘Could you go to bed?’ to an imperative-format ‘Go to bed!’ as second request) (Craven & Potter, 2010).

Few studies have examined the effects of aphasia on formulation of requests and deontic authority. In a study of how parents with aphasia make requests to their children, Killmer et al. (2022b) found differences in resources used for making requests. The study illustrates how two parents with greater linguistic resources combine a variety of verbal request formats with gestures for requesting, while a parent with more limited linguistic resources mainly uses gestures for the same activity. Bauer et al. (2009) describe how a parent with severe aphasia constructs a request to his child together with his wife, who provides a version of what her husband means to say. Studies describe the use of similar resources in different types of requests by individuals with moderate and severe aphasia (Anglade et al., 2018, 2021; Bauer, 2009; Bauer et al., 2009; C. Goodwin et al., 2009). In terms of calibrating the degree of deontic authority, Killmer et al. (2022b) show that all three parents with aphasia display their rights to make a request to their children. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that aphasia may limit the fine-tuning of deontic authority in making requests to children. Whereas the two persons with greater linguistic resources adjust the degree of authority, for example by adding mitigating words such as ‘a bit’, the person with more limited linguistic resources uses requests that mostly show unmitigated authority, for example by using higher volume. They argue that this man lacks the linguistic tools to adjust his deontic authority. In another study, although not focused on requests, Killmer et al. (2022a) describe practices that secure deontic authority of a man with severe Wernicke’s aphasia in planning activities with members of his family. This man uses verbal resources, such as modal constructions ‘you have to’ and ‘you can’, open questions, and non-verbal resources, such as gaze, for up- and downgrading his deontic rights. In summary, individuals with aphasia may benefit from nonverbal resources such as pointing and other gestures when constructing requests. However, in modifying deontic rights to requests, verbal resources such as specific linguistic formats and modal constructions seem to play a crucial role, and aphasia may affect the ability to use them.

The present study

The present study uses CA to examine a series of request sequences involving negotiation in interactions between parents with aphasia and their children, such as at bedtime, mealtimes, and during game play. The analysis focuses on how these parents with aphasia deal with children’s passive or active resistance to requests. The aim of the study is twofold:

1. To show the ways these parents with aphasia respond to their children’s resistance.

2. To examine the consequences of these ways of responding for the deontic authority of these parents with aphasia.

By examining how these parents with aphasia use resources in order to accomplish their interactional projects and display deontic authority, the present study illustrates what parenting with aphasia may look like in everyday interactions when parental authority is challenged by children.

Materials and method

CA is used in the present study (for example Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). The Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) gave ethical approval for the study. All names of participants and locations reported are pseudonyms to maintain anonymity.

Materials

Data were obtained from the AphaDB database provided by Prof. Dr. Auer (University of Freiburg, Germany) and Dr. Angelika Bauer (School of Speech Therapy, Freiburg, Germany).¹ The author was given access to the data for research purposes but was not involved in the data collection. The corpus includes 142 recordings and transcripts (in total approximately 150 hours) elicited from nine German-speaking persons with aphasia (eight men and one woman). Participants videotaped themselves while talking with their friends, spouses, and/or their children. Five data sets with young children are available in this database. However, one participant did not make any requests to her children and another asked his daughter to do an action only once. Therefore, in the present study, three parents with aphasia and their children were analysed over 10 hours of interaction. Demographic and medical information about the participants can be found in Table 1.

Table 1. Overview: Demographic and medical information of participants with aphasia who recorded conversations with their children.

Parent with aphasia (age^a, profession)	Gender	Aetiology and lesion side	Type of aphasia^b	Severity of aphasia^b	Family members: spouse (age^a, profession), children (age^a)	Same participant as in the following studies
Udo (50, lawyer)	M	Ischemic left middle cerebral artery stroke	Anomic aphasia	Mild	Tina (43, housewife), Fabian (12), Annika (14)	Killmer et al. (2022b)
Tim (38, truck driver)	M	Extensive cerebral haemorrhage in the left temporal lobe	Anomic aphasia	Mild	Julia (36, part-time carpenter), Anna (9)	Killmer et al. (2022b)
Norbert (46, senior businessman)	M	Ischemic left middle cerebral artery stroke	Initially: global aphasia, After 1 year: Broca’s aphasia	Severe	Marina (36, part-time office clerk), Florian (1), Hannah (14), Denise (18)	Called ‘HC’ in Auer and Bauer (2009); Killmer et al. (2022b)

^aAge at first recording.

^bDiagnosed with the Aachener Aphasie Test (AAT) (Huber et al., 1983).

Method

CA is a qualitative methodology that aims to examine the structure and order of talk in interaction (Schegloff, 2007). It relies on repeated viewing of recordings of natural occurring interactions to identify the practices participants use to achieve social action (Cameron, 2001; Ten Have, 1999). In the present study, recordings were examined for instances of resistance to requests for actions. These were identified based on the ‘next-turn-proof procedure’ (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). According to CA procedure, participants’ next actions indicate how a previous action (in this case resistance to requests) was understood.

The analytic procedure followed three steps: identification of a phenomenon, building of a collection of instances, and qualitative analysis of action formation (Levinson, 2013). First, I identified 200 instances of requests in the data of three participants with children. I then focused on sequences of parental attempts to get a child to do or stop an action that required an immediate embodied response from the child. For more information on these ‘requests for action’ (Tse Crepaldi, 2017, p. 21), as I decided to call them, see Killmer et al. (2022b). Following this, I identified instances of resistance to requests (Table 2). The four sequences presented below were selected to provide detailed insight into typical negotiation practices and were chosen because they provide the best examples of practices of the three parents when dealing with active and passive resistance. Since the present study focuses on request sequences involving negotiation, I decided to focus on children who are able to negotiate verbally. Therefore, I excluded interactions with infants and toddlers due to their preverbal communication.

Table 2. Information about recordings and children’s resistance to requests per recording.

Person	Months after person came home from rehabilitation	Number of recording^a	Length of recording in minutes^b	Description of situation	Requests	Resistances
Udo	0	1	36	Dinner	3	0
	1	2	23	Chatting	4	3 (A, P, A)
Tim	0	1	14	Dinner	2	2 (P (Extract 1), A)
		2	12	Dinner	0
		3	20	Doing a puzzle	6	3 (P, P, P)
		4	7	Dinner	0
	1	5	19	Playing Ludo	1	0
		6a	7	Chatting	1	0
		6b	3	Chatting	1	1 (A (Extracts 3&4))
		7	14	Lunch	0	0
		8	16	Lunch	2	0
		9	15	Lunch	0	0
	6	10	60	Dinner	0	0
	12	11	57	Coffee time	0	0
Norbert	0	1	40	Dinner	3	2 (A, P)
		2	16	Changing diapers	1	1 (P)
		3	52	Playing Monopoly	17	8 (P, A, A, U, P (Extract 2), U, P, A)
	1	4	33	Dinner	0	0
		5	39	Dinner	1	1 (A (Extract 5))
	3	6	9	Planting flowers	1	1 (P)
		7	44	Dinner	2	1 (A)

Legend: Type of (first) resistance (P – passive, A – active, U – unclassified).

^aRecording b being the succession of recording a.

^bParent with aphasia and child present in video, whole video might be longer.

For the present study, data were transcribed according to the conventions of the Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT 2) conventions (Selting et al., 1998, 2011) (see Appendix for conventions) and a multimodal transcription (Mondada, 2006) is added when of analytical interest. In the transcripts, participants are referred to by the capital letter of their pseudonym. Because participant Norbert occasionally produces neologisms (sound strings that are non-words), a gloss line is included if necessary, in which incomprehensible word forms are transcribed according to German spelling and marked with curly brackets (Laakso & Godt, 2016).

Results

The analysis illustrates a number of relevant practices that parents with aphasia use when responding to their children’s resistance. The practices are organised around two ways children are seen to show resistance. First, I analyse the responses of parents with aphasia to passive resistance (inaction). Then, I examine responses to active resistance, such as accounts and bargaining.

Responding to passive resistance with a pursuit

The first extract shows how Tim responds to his daughter Anna’s passive resistance with pursuits. Tim, his wife Julia and their daughter Anna are sitting at the dinner table. They have just started dinner and each has a slice of bread on their plate. Anna announces that she is going to open the blue one (a carton of Philadelphia cheese), which implies that she is going to spread the Philadelphia cheese on her bread (line 1). Tim requests Anna to take butter first (lines 4). Instead of taking butter, Anna sits still (line 6).

Anna does not respond to Tim’s request. At a point where she could perform the requested action (taking butter) (line 4) or deny the request, she remains inactive and silent (line 4). Tim treats Anna’s (non-)response as resistance. Given the fact that one way of projecting misalignment with a previous action is to preface a turn with silence rather than to comply with it immediately (Schegloff, 2007), Tim understands Anna’s inaction and silence as withholding action. He makes a response from Anna more relevant by adding the tag-question ‘gell’ (right) (line 5). Again, Anna remains silent (line 6). Tim then uses the vocative ‘Fräulein’ (missy) (line 7), dedicated to pursuing a response and to reproaching Anna (Svennevig, 2012). ‘Fräulein’ (literally: Miss) is the diminutive form of ‘Frau’ (Mrs.). It is an archaic form of address for unmarried women in German and typically used today to express disapproval of a girl’s behaviour. Nevertheless, Anna remains silent. Again, Tim demands uptake to his request by incrementing the pursuit with the tag-question ‘ne’ (right) (line 8). Now Anna actively expresses her resistance with a counter (Schegloff, 2007) (line 9). Tim accepts the counter (line 10) with Julia’s assistance (line 11). This co-authoring practice has been described previously in typical interactions (Goffman, 1967) and in aphasia (Bauer, 2009). The extract shows that Tim treats inaction as resistance-implicative. Each of the extensions (the tag-questions and the vocative) makes a response more relevant (Craven & Potter, 2010; M. H. Goodwin et al., 2012).

It is possible that Anna’s inaction may be difficulty with hearing or trouble understanding the request. However, previous research has shown that such problems are resolved by repeating the request or clarifying an understanding problem, respectively (Pomerantz, 1984). Because these markers are absent in Tim’s response to silence, he visibly treats the inaction as resistance.

With regard to the negotiation of deontic authority, the fact that Anna announces her next action (line 1) seems to show her orienting to the contingency that the action might not be approved of by her parents. While claiming entitlement to her planned action by announcing it, she is granting her parents an opportunity to disapprove her plan. Following this, Tim presents his request as an announcement by using present tense (line 4). He does not ask if Anna could first butter her slice of bread. He displays high entitlement and shows that the request is not contingent on Anna’s ability to perform the action. Since Tim’s request does not generate an immediate action, he upgrades his attempts to generate an action by the following three means. First, tag-questions (lines 5&8) intensify the request and upgrade Tim’s entitlement to the requested action. Second, high entitlement is claimed by addressing Anna directly and reproaching her with a vocative (line 7). This device emphasises parental authority. Third, non-verbal devices such as stalling his ongoing action of moving objects on the table in order to look directly at Anna (line 6) reinforce Tim’s entitlement. This extract shows how Tim lowers Anna’s right to resist by increasing his deontic authority through repeated and intensified pursuits (Craven & Potter, 2010).

A similar combination of verbal and non-verbal resources to make a child’s response more relevant is found in the pursuits of Norbert. Norbert is pursuing a response from his daughter Hannah after she fails to respond to his request during a board game. He, his wife Marina and their daughters Denise and Hannah are sitting in the living room playing Monopoly (a board game where players buy up streets represented by cards). The extract shows a sequence in which it is Hannah’s turn to decide whether to buy a street. To evaluate her decision, Hannah takes a card from the stack that represents a street and contains information about it (line 1).

Norbert attempts to stop Hannah’s action of taking the card with a trouble alert that expresses his displeasure, ‘böta’ (a non-word) (line 2), while he tries to take the card out of Hannah’s hand. It should be noted that it is not entirely clear to the analyst why Hannah is not allowed to take the card. Hannah understands Norbert’s action as a request to put the card back on the stack, and says that she will only look at the card (line 3) – she will not take the card without paying for it. A side sequence between Norbert and Denise is not relevant to this analysis (lines 4–6). In line 7, Norbert displays that he is monitoring Hannah for a reaction by looking at her. However, this does not lead to any action on Hannah’s part (line 7). Norbert pursues his request by prompting her with the imperative ‘komm’ (come) and indicating with a finger movement to give him the card (line 8, Image 1). Again, there is no reaction from Hannah (line 8). Then, Norbert reproaches Hannah with ‘he’ (hey) (line 9), which makes an action even more relevant. Finally, he takes the card from Hannah and puts it back on the stack (line 9). This elicits a response; Hannah decides to buy the street (line 10). Extract 2 shows that this father with more limited linguistic resources responds to his daughter’s inaction with verbal and non-verbal pursuits. Similar to the father with greater linguistic resources in Extract 1, Norbert treats his child’s inaction as passive resistance.

Extract 1. Philadelphia.

Extract 2. Card.

Image 1. Line 8: Norbert moves fingers from left to right – indicating ‘give it to me’ (image: Firkin, 2017; arrows added by author).

In terms of deontic authority, Hannah’s initial announcement along with her physical action displays her entitlement to her action (line 1). She does not ask for permission and thus her action is not contingent on the action of the other Monopoly players. Norbert objects to Hannah’s action with a strong request format by using increased volume (Aronsson & Thorell, 1999) and trying to physically take the card away from Hannah (line 2). He does not make the request contingent on her acceptance. Hannah acknowledges Norbert’s complaint with ‘ja’ (yes) but displays her entitlement by accounting for her resistance (line 529). In the following course of action, Norbert continues to express high deontic authority by four means. First, he upgrades his claim of authority with an imperative, ‘komm’ (come) (line 8). An imperative is a fitting action and ’komm’ is one of Norbert’s seven word repertoire (come, yes, no, one, two, three, so/good²). Second, he reproaches Hannah’s inaction (line 9) – not orienting to contingencies. Third, Norbert increases his entitlement through raised volume (line 9) (Aronsson & Thorell, 1999). Fourth, he claims high entitlement with physical action (lines 9&10). He performs the requested action by taking and replacing the card himself, displaying it as not contingent on Hannah’s ability or willingness to perform the action. Similar upgraded formats involving physical intervention in parent-child request sequences have been described in typical parent-child interaction (Cekaite, 2010; Craven & Potter, 2010; M. H. Goodwin, 2006). In these typical interactions, however, requests were verbally initiated and evolved into physical action. Unlike this sequence, they were not initiated with physical action. This extract shows that Norbert initiates the request sequence with upgraded authority (for more information about upgraded requests see Killmer et al., 2022b). His use of non-verbal practices further increase his claim of authority. Whereas Tim, with greater linguistic resources, used fine-tuned verbal practices, such fine-tuning is not present in Norbert’s physical actions. His actions reveal his agency and display his actions as not contingent on the actions of the child.

Responding to active resistance with a counterargument

The following extract shows how Tim responds to his daughter Anna’s active resistance by engaging in her line of argumentation. Tim and his wife Julia are sitting at the kitchen table talking when their daughter Anna enters the room. Julia and Anna are talking about which needle Anna should use for something she wants to sew. Julia remarks that they will not solve the needle problem tonight (line 1–3) before Tim requests Anna to go (to bed) (line 4). Anna responds by trying to delay going to bed (line 7). A long negotiation sequence ensues because Anna repeatedly shows active resistance, to which Tim responds with second requests (marked with arrows in the extract). Due to the length of the sequence, I present it in two parts.

Extract 3. Bedtime I.

Tim treats Anna’s attempt to bargain as resistance and responds with ‘nein’ (no) as well as shaking his head (line 8). Julia reinforces Tim’s rejection by upgrading it (lines 9&10). This is followed by a three-part re-request sequence between Tim and Anna (lines 11–14). First, in a second request, Tim presents the subsequent actions he requests Anna to do as a list (lines 11&12). In response, Anna reacts with resistance by tilting her head to the side (line 12) – a non-verbal plea made by conveying cuteness, a likely repeat of her bargain at line 7. Finally, Tim responds to Anna’s resistance by denying the request to stay up until 9 (lines 13&14). This pattern is repeated three times over the subsequent sequence with little modification (see Extract 4 lines 30–32, lines 41–44 and 46–51). After further negotiation, Anna finally leaves the room and presumably goes to bed.

Extract 4. Bedtime II.

Anna’s rejections set the stage for Tim’s next second requests. Either he responds to the active resistance with simple negation, thus, ignoring her line of argumentation (lines 8, 32, 44) or he engages in her argumentation by addressing her line of reasoning (lines 51&55). When addressing her in line 51, he partially rejects Anna’s resistance with ‘noch nicht’ (not yet). In line 55, Tim counters Anna’s argument that she is allowed to stay up until nine because she is nine years old (line 31) by arguing jokingly that he and his wife (because of their age) would never have to go to bed at all (line 55). Furthermore, as in typical parent-child interaction, he uses the adverb ‘jetzt’ (now) in the second requests (lines 11, 30, 46&58) to ‘work towards reclaiming the sequential position of the first […][request], with the associated effect of deleting the recipient’s non-compliant response’ (Craven & Potter, 2010, p. 439). This sequence shows that Tim uses second requests and counterarguments to manage Anna’s active resistance and to work towards her compliance (Bova & Arcidiacono, 2013; M. H. Goodwin, 2006).

As the sequence develops, requests are expressed with higher deontic authority, a pattern also described in typical parent-child negotiation sequences (Craven & Potter, 2010). Tim expresses his initial request as a declarative announcement in the present tense (line 4), claiming high entitlement (Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012). Anna’s subsequent resistance challenges parental authority by showing that she has the right to negotiate a parental request and thus demonstrates agency. In the following course of action, Tim employs three means for upgrading deontic authority. First, countering Anna’s resistance with second requests displays Tim’s entitlement to request an action from his daughter (lines 11, 30, 41 and 46). Second, Tim uses linguistic formats such as imperatives (lines 12, 57&58) and declaratives (lines 30, 41, 46&47) that upgrade his entitlement. Such upgraded formats withdraw any orientation to Anna’s willingness with respect to the requested action. Third, Tim employs non-verbal means to reinforce his deontic authority. He underpins his rejections in lines 8 and 50 with a shake of his head. He also enhances the second request by pointing with his head, a deictic gesture (line 12). In line 46, by raising his eyebrows and thus changing his facial expression, Tim makes his second request even more active. This extract shows that as well as responding to active resistance from his daughter with counterarguments, Tim upgrades his deontic authority.

The next extract is an example of how Norbert, unlike Tim, responds to his daughter’s active resistance without engaging with her reasoning. Norbert, his wife Marina and their children Hannah and Fabian are sitting in the dining room eating dinner when Hannah cuts the crust off her bread (line 1). She initiates the sequence by giving reasons for why she does not want to eat the crust of bread and holds up the crust (line 2). By providing an explanation, Hannah likely aligns with the conventions of eating her crusts while simultaneously mitigating her action. Hannah repeats the same account (line 10) – challenging the legitimacy of Norbert’s request and contesting his parental authority.

While Hannah hands the crust of bread to her mother (line 5), Norbert utters a noticing ‘ja so’ (yes like this) and makes a quick movement with his fork in Hannah’s direction (line 6). As we will see in the unfolding sequence, Hannah understands Norbert’s action as an attempt to stop the planned course of action of giving away the bread crust. Marina now has the crust and Hannah sits still (line 7). In the slot immediately following Norbert’s request to keep the crust, Hannah’s action shows resistance. As in Extract 2, Norbert then mobilises a response from Hannah with a loud ‘hey’ while looking at her with an angry expression (line 8). Hannah responds with active resistance by accounting for turning down the request (lines 9&10). She demonstrates the legitimacy of her resistance. Norbert responds with ‘äh so äh so’ (eh like this eh like this) while looking at Hannah and making a gesture in her direction (line 11). His turn is characterised by word searching and lacks content words. Marina appears to joining in with his criticism (line 12). Norbert closes the sequence with a complaint about Hannah’s resistance (line 14) – a turn that finalises the rejection of his request and does not require a response. Extract 5 illustrates how this father with more limited linguistic resources tries to work towards his daughter’s compliance, but it seems that he has difficulty constructing a line of reasoning for this type of resistance, which is typically responded to verbally. In contrast to Tim’s verbal engagement with his daughter’s line of reasoning, Norbert seems unable to present a counterargument as a way of handling active resistance.

Extract 5. Crust of bread.

Norbert mostly non-verbally upgrades his deontic rights in the unfolding negotiation sequence. In the course of action, five different means are central to the upgrading of Norbert’s deontic authority. First, by presenting his request with rising final intonation (line 6), he indicates his request as contingent on Hannah’s response (line 6). Second, the initial request is accompanied by a hand gesture that upgrades it (line 6). This gesture is repeated in line 11 and enhanced because Norbert is no longer holding his knife. Third, while he only looks at the crust in the initial request (line 6), in line 8 he looks directly at Hannah while frowning. Fourth, increased volume in lines 8 and 11 underscores Norbert’s entitlement to forbid Hannah’s action. Finally, the repetition of the utterance ‘äh so’ (eh so) (line 11) reinforces Norbert’s entitlement. Extract 5 shows how Norbert, responds to active resistance by enhancing his deontic rights with volume, gestures, gaze and repetition. While Tim, who has greater linguistic resources, mainly upgrades his rights verbally, Norbert mainly uses non-verbal means.

Discussion

This analysis, illustrated with extracts from two of three parents with aphasia, reveals all three work persistently towards compliance with their requests, when they encounter resistance from a child. While Killmer et al. (2022b) reported how these three parents with aphasia successfully express their entitlement to request actions from their children, the current study shows how they continue to pursue their entitlement when challenged by child resistance. Dealing with passive child resistance appears easier than dealing with active child resistance because it requires fewer interactional resources; a simple pursuit in the right sequential position can accomplish this. However, limited linguistic resources seem to restrict the ability to address the child’s counterarguments. Whereas the two speakers with greater linguistic resources attempt to convince their children to do a requested task by presenting counterarguments, the person with more limited resources upgrades his deontic authority by non-verbal means, such as prosody or physical action. These findings contribute to previous research by providing a deeper understanding of opportunities and challenges to participate in negotiating requests to children for parents with aphasia.

The first objective of this study concerned the various ways these parents with aphasia respond to their children’s resistance. The data show that all three parents with aphasia treat inaction as delay or hesitation, and pursue a response by various prompts such as ‘hey’ or ‘right’. This is similar to parents’ responses in typical interaction (Craven & Potter, 2010; M. H. Goodwin et al., 2012). In contrast, active resistance requires actions that are more complex. The child’s attempt to resist must be denied and accounting for the request is required. The two persons with greater linguistic resources accomplish this by engaging in their children’s reasoning. They seek compliance based on mutual agreement and by legitimising their requests. The person with more limited linguistic resources, on the other hand, expresses his displeasure with the child’s resistance but fails to address the child’s accounts and perspectives. He pursues compliance to his request without engaging with the child’s stance. For this speaker, limited access to linguistic resources seems to influence his way of responding to active resistance.

The second objective was to examine what consequences the way of formulating responses has for the deontic authority of these parents with aphasia. The data show that linguistic resources may influence the way deontic authority is expressed in a request. In general, all three parents with aphasia pursue an answer, which shows their parental authority. They also upgrade their requests when they are not met with immediate compliance, similar to parents in typical interactions (Craven & Potter, 2010). The two persons with greater linguistic resources calibrate deontic authority in their second requests using various resources for up- and downgrading. For example, they use increments such as a vocative ‘missy’ or declaratives such as ‘now you go to bed’ to responsively upgrade their deontic authority. In this way, they employ techniques similar to those described for typical parent-child negotiation (Craven & Potter, 2010; M. H. Goodwin & Cekaite, 2013; Kent, 2011). However, such fine-tuning is not present when the parent with more limited linguistic resources negotiates with his children. Norbert uses intrusive physical practices, gestures, repetition and volume for getting a requested task done. This restricts the child’s interactional space, in contrast to verbal practices that indicate the requested action as more contingent on a child’s response. Norbert does not appear to have access to linguistic formats greater linguistic resources for adjusting deontic authority. For this one speaker at least, limited linguistic resources seem to restrict the ability to calibrate deontic authority.

Regarding the limitations and implications of the present study, this is an analysis of only three individuals with aphasia and their children. Many of the practices observed are characteristic of typical parental requests, and thus it may be that other parents with aphasia negotiate in similar ways and therefore may encounter similar challenges. However, from the observation of only three participants, we cannot deduce generalisations for parenting with aphasia. We can observe that these participants in question interact in these ways, but it is necessary to observe other parents living with aphasia to strengthen the findings. A more comprehensive study of negotiation would be desirable. Future research should analyse a larger dataset to examine the practices of negotiating authority in various everyday activities of individuals with a range of aphasia types and severity and their children.

Investigating the interactional realisation of key activities between parents with aphasia and their children appears valuable to understand how people living with aphasia can continue to perform the various social roles expected of them. Aphasia affects the entire family (Grawburg et al., 2019) and parents with aphasia want support to engage with their children (see for example Manning et al., 2021; Ryan & Pitt, 2018). Communication partner training (CPT) may benefit people with aphasia and their families by promoting reflection on interactional activities such as negotiating requests and ways to support such activities. Training may provide the opportunity for parents with aphasia and their children to identify key activities and communicative practices for engaging in them that both support and hinder talk. Although some social roles are more or less withdrawn from when aphasia occurs (voluntarily or not), such as working or socialising, parenting is not a role that can be abandoned. It may change, but parents with aphasia will continue to be parents. Therefore, securing engagement in parenting is most crucial for the social roles and relationships of parents with aphasia and their children.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the present study reports findings based on video recordings of three persons with aphasia interacting with their children. The analysis focused on how these parents with aphasia respond to instances of resistance from their children. The study offers insights into practices that seem to affect the ability of parents with aphasia to negotiate with their children and thus engage in parenting and participate in family life. In order to be able to offer support when engaging with children as desired by parents with aphasia, it is important to gain further insights into how aphasia can affect the organisation of ordinary, everyday family talk and life.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Prof. Dr Jan Svennevig and Dr Suzanne Beeke who provided insight and expertise that greatly assisted this research. I would also like to thank them for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Furthermore, I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Dr Auer and Dr Angelika Bauer for providing access to the data of the research project Adaptationsstrategien in der familiären Kommunikation zwischen Aphasikern und ihren Partnerinnen (2000 - 2005) (Adaption strategies in familial communication between aphasics and their partners). Finally, I would like to thank the Conversation Analysis and Interaction Linguistics research group at the University of Oslo for their input during data sessions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research has been carried out as part of a PhD scholarship funded by the Faculty of Humanities, University Oslo, Norway. The author is affiliated with the Center of Multilingualism Across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, funded by the Research Council of Norway, grant number [223265].

Notes

¹ For further information about the data see Bauer (2009).

² The meaning of ‘so’ in German depends on intonation.

Appendix

Summary of the most important GAT 2 transcription conventions

(Selting et al., 2011) with additions by present author:

Table

Sequential structure
[] []	Overlap and simultaneous talk
=	fast, immediate continuation with a new turn or segment (latching)
In- and outbreaths
°h/h°	in-/outbreaths of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration
°hh/hh°	in-/outbreaths of appr. 0.5–0.8 sec. duration
°hhh/hhh°	in-/outbreaths of appr. 0.8–1.0 sec. duration
Pauses
(.)	micro pause, estimated, up to 0.2 sec. duration appr.
(-)	short estimated pause of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration
(–)	intermediary estimated pause of appr. 0.5–0.8 sec. duration
(—)	longer estimated pause of appr. 0.8–1.0 sec. duration
(0.5)/(2.0)	measured pause of appr. 0.5/2.0 sec. duration (to tenth of a second)
Other segmental conventions
:	lengthening, by about 0.2–0.5 sec.
::	lengthening, by about 0.5–0.8 sec.
:::	lengthening, by about 0.8–1.0 sec.
ʔ	cut-off by glottal closure
and_uh	cliticizations within units
uh, uhm, etc.	hesitation markers, so-called “filled pauses”
Laughter and crying
haha, hehe, hihi	syllabic laughter
((laughs)), ((cries))	description of laughter and crying
< <laughing> >	laughter particles accompanying speech with indication of scope
<<:-)> so>	smile voice
Continuers
hm, yes, no, yeah	monosyllabic tokens
hm_hm, ye_es, no_o	bi-syllabic tokens
ʔhmʔhm	with glottal closure, often negating
Accentuation
SYLlable	focus accent
sYllable	secondary accent
!SYL!lable	extra strong accent
Final pitch movements of intonation phrases
?	rising to high
,	rising to mid
-	level
;	falling to mid
.	falling to low
Pitch jumps
↑	smaller pitch upstep
↓	smaller pitch downstep
↑↑	larger pitch upstep
↓↓	larger pitch downstep
<<l> >	lower pitch register
<<h> >	higher pitch register
Intralinear notation of accent pitch movements
`SO	falling
^́ ^́SO	rising
^̄ SO	level
ˆSO	rising-falling
ˇSO	falling-rising
↑`	small pitch upstep to the peak of the accented syllable
↓ ́	small pitch downstep to the valley of the accented syllable
↑ ̄SO bzw. ↓ ̄SO	pitch jumps to higher or lower level accented syllables
↑↑`SO bzw. ↓↓ ́SO	larger pitch upsteps or downsteps to the peak or valley of the accented syllable
Loudness and tempo changes, with scope
<<f> >	forte, loud
<<ff> >	fortissimo, very loud
<<p> >	piano, soft
<<pp> >	pianissimo, very soft
<<all> >	allegro, fast
<<len> >	lento, slow
<<cresc> >	crescendo, increasingly louder
<<dim> >	diminuendo, increasingly softer
<<acc> >	accelerando, increasingly faster
<<rall> >	rallentando, increasingly slower
Changes in voice quality and articulation, with scope
<<creaky> >	glottalized
<<whispery> >	change in voice quality as stated
Other conventions
<<surprised> >	interpretive commentwith indication of scope
((coughs))	non- verbal vocal actions and events
<<coughing> >	…with indication of scope
()	unintelligible passage
(xxx), (xxxxxx)	one or two unintelligible syllables
(may i)	assumed wording
(may i say/let us say)	possible alternatives
((unintelligible, appr. 3 sec))	unintelligible passage with indication of duration
((…))	omission in transcript
–>	refers to a line of transcript relevant in the argument
Additions by present author(s)
f:/h: ^/*	representing non-verbal behaviour (e.g. gestures, movements and gaze)
?:	unknown speaker