Linguistic analysis of discourse in aphasia: A review of the literature

ABSTRACT

This review examined previous research applications of linguistic discourse analysis to assess the language of adults with aphasia. A comprehensive literature search of seven databases identified 165 studies that applied linguistic measures to samples of discourse collected from people with aphasia. Analysis of methodological applications revealed an increase in published research using linguistic discourse analysis over the past 40 years, particularly to measure the generalisation of therapy outcomes to language in use. Narrative language samples were most frequently subject to analysis though all language genres were observed across included studies. A total of 536 different linguistic measures were applied to examine language behaviours. Growth in the research use of linguistic discourse analysis and suggestions that this growth may be reflected in clinical practice requires further investigation. Future research directions are discussed to investigate clinical use of discourse analysis and examine the differences that exist between research and clinical practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Aphasia
• discourse
• discourse analysis
• language
• linguistic analysis
• research methods

Acknowledgments

This project contributes to the requirements for Lucy Bryant’s PhD candidature in Speech Pathology at The University of Newcastle, Australia, under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Spencer and Conjoint Professor Alison Ferguson.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Notes

¹ ‘Conversational analysis’ is a term not uncommon in the speech pathology literature to describe a general and less formal approach to the analysis of interaction and all interlocutors’ utterances. It differs from Conversation Analysis (CA), the specific procedure for transcription and analysis defined by researchers such as Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974).