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Article In: Language and Dialogue: Online-First Articles

Why dialogue matters in aphasia

From loss of language to disrupted dialogic use

 | University of Shanghai for Science and Technology
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Abstract
Aphasia is commonly described as impairment of an individual language system. This article asks what happens to dialogue when the linguistic resources used to accomplish social action are disrupted. Drawing on Weigand’s language-as-dialogue theory and Mixed Game Model, together with dialogical linguistics, conversation analysis, multimodal interaction and functional communication, it argues that impairment is necessary but insufficient to explain aphasic performance. Dialogue is the organisation through which impaired and preserved resources become consequential for initiative, reaction, repair and understanding under particular partner and activity conditions. The account distinguishes individual linguistic capacity, competence-in-performance, dyadic accomplishment and participation, and shows how aphasia sharpens dialogue theory under communicative asymmetry.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What impairment accounts explain and what they leave unresolved
  • 3.Dialogue as the constitutive organisation of language use
    • 3.1Dialogue beyond communicative context
    • 3.2Dialogue as a complex whole
    • 3.3Action, reaction and the pursuit of understanding
    • 3.4Relating impairment to dialogic accomplishment
  • 4.Dialogic action under aphasic conditions
    • 4.1Initiative and reactive action
    • 4.2Repair and the pursuit of understanding
    • 4.3Shared attention and multimodal means
    • 4.4Adaptation across partners and activities
  • 5.Competence-in-performance under asymmetry
  • 6.Consequences for assessment and rehabilitation
    • 6.1What assessment can infer
    • 6.2What intervention changes
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
References (49)
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