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Article published In:
Pragmatics of Active Social Inclusion
Edited by Yoshiko Matsumoto and Heidi E. Hamilton
[Pragmatics and Society 15:1] 2024
► pp. 178–195

‘Proto-conversation’ as a practice in late-stage dementia care

ORCID logo | Linköping University
| Linköping University
| Stockholm University

This study suggests that the concept of proto-conversation may be used to describe and understand communication with people with late-stage dementia who have lost their abilities to produce verbal language. In the study, a multimodal conversation analytic method is used to analyze sequences of interactions between professional caregivers in an elderly care home and people with late-stage dementia. The study shows how minimal actions (shift of gaze directions, vocalizations or bodily movements) not instantly recognizable as intentional, communicative conduct, may be recognized and treated as communicative contributions by engaging the person living with dementia in proto-conversations. In such interactional sequences, the caregivers do not only turn the contributions of persons with dementia into actions through their responses, but they also treat the persons as agentive actors and position them as partners in interaction.

Keywords: dementia, late-stage dementia, proto-conversation, social interaction, multi-modality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dementia and problem-management strategies
  • 3.Proto-conversation as a mundane practice
  • 4.Material and methods
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1 Example 1: Responding to non-lexical vocalizations
    • 5.2 Example 2: Responding to gaze
    • 5.3 Example 3: Response to a response
  • 6.Discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 18 January 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.23048.hyd
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