Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics of Active Social Inclusion
Edited by Yoshiko Matsumoto and Heidi E. Hamilton
[Pragmatics and Society 15:1] 2024
► pp. 122–139

Verbal play in dementia care

A longitudinal study

| National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

Humor has been found to be used as a discourse strategy for negotiating power relations and mitigating FTAs in institutional elderly care. Drawing from two years of ethnography in two adult day centers in Taiwan, this article examines verbal play between a person living with dementia and a caregiver over time to illustrate how verbal play is used as meaningful, tailored practices for person-centered dementia care that leads to enhanced cognition and positive emotion. The caregiver’s framing of dementia care as person-centered and her laminating multiple frames of interactions to enrich communicative environments provides a fruitful approach to dementia care in institutional contexts and beyond.

Keywords: dementia, verbal play, humor, framing, adult day center, Taiwan
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Humor in institutional elderly care
  • 3.Verbal play and dementia
  • 4.The study
  • 5.Collaborative play with language(s)
    • 5.1Learning a flower name and playing with it
    • 5.2Playing with kinship terms
    • 5.3Multilingual play
    • 5.4Playing with the flower name, again!
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 December 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.23050.lin
References
Backhaus, Peter
2009 “Politeness in Institutional Elderly Care in Japan: A Cross- Cultural Comparison.” Journal of Politeness Research 5 (1): 53–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bateson, Gregory
1972 Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Davis, Boyd H., Margaret Maclagan, and Dena Shenk
2016 “The Silent Violence of Marginalization and Teasing in Dementia Care.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 4 (1): 35–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duff, Melissa C., Diana R. Gallegos, Neal J. Cohen, and Daniel Tranel
2013 “Learning in Alzheimer’s Disease is Facilitated by Social Interaction.” Journal of Comparative Neurology 521 (18): 4356–4369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duranti, Alessandro, and Charles Goodwin
(eds.) 1992 Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1974 Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Grainger, Karen
2004a “Communication and the Institutionalized Elderly.” In Handbook of Communication and Aging Research, ed. by John F. Nussbaum and Justine Coupland, 479–497. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.Google Scholar
2004b “Verbal Play on the Hospital Ward: Solidarity or Power?” Multilingua, 23 (1–2): 39–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Heidi. E., and Toshiko Hamaguchi
2015 “Discourse and Aging.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, 705–727. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Heidi E.
2019 Language, Dementia, and Meaning Making: Navigating Challenges of Cognition and Face in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hengst, Julie A.
2006 ““That Mea::n Dog”: Linguistic Mischief and Verbal Play as a Communicative Resource in Aphasia.” Aphasiology 20 (2): 312–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kitwood, Tom
1997 Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Berkshire: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Shumin, and Chia-Hsun Hsueh
2022 “Task-plus Communication: Beyond the Binary of Task Talk versus Social Talk in Dementia Care. In Dementia Caregiving East and West: Issues of Communication, ed. by Boyd H. Davis and Margaret Maclagan, 102–113. Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholar Publishing.Google Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree, and Karen Grainger
2002 “Comparative Gerontolinguistics: Characterizing Discourses in Caring Institutions in South Africa and the United Kingdom.” Journal of Social Issues 58 (4): 815–824. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marsden, Sharon, and Janet Holmes
2014 “Talking to the Elderly in New Zealand Residential Care Settings.” Journal of Pragmatics 641: 17–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, Yoshiko
2011a “Painful to playful: Quotidian Frames in the Conversational Discourse of Older Japanese Women.” Language in Society 40 (5): 591–616. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011b “Reframing to Regain Identity with Humor: What Conversations with Friends Suggest for Communication in Elderly Care.” In Communication in Elderly Care: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. by Peter Backhaus, 145–165. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita
1980 “Telling My Side: ‘Limited Access’ as a ‘Fishing’ Device.” Sociological Inquiry 50 (3–4): 186–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sherzer, Joel
2002 Speech Play and Verbal Art. Austin: University of Texas Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shune, Samantha, and Melissa C. Duff
2012 “Verbal Play as an Interactional Discourse Resource in Early Stage Alzheimer’s Disease.” Aphasiology 26 (6): 811–825. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svennevig, Jan, and Heidi E. Hamilton
2022 “Fostering Storytelling by Persons with Dementia in Multiparty Conversation.” In Multilingualism across the Lifespan, ed. by Unn Røyneland, and Robert Blackwood, 169–188. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah, and Cynthia Wallat
1993 “Interactive Frames and Knowledge Schemas in Interaction: Examples from a Medical Examination/Interview.” In Framing in Discourse, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 57–76. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar