When Language Breaks Down: Analysing Discourse in Clinical Contexts

by Elissa D. Asp, Jessica de de Villiers

Overview

Doctors, nurses, and other caregivers often know what people with Alzheimer's disease or Asperger's 'sound like' - that is they recognise patterns in people's discourse, from sounds and silences, to words, sentences and story structures. Such discourse patterns may inform their clinical judgements and affect the decisions they make. However, this knowledge is often tacit, like recognising a regional accent without knowing how to describe its features. This is the first book to present models for comprehensively describing discourse specifically in clinical contexts and to illustrate models with detailed analyses of discourse patterns associated with degenerative (Alzheimer's) and developmental (autism spectrum) disorders. The book is aimed not only at advanced students and researchers in linguistics, discourse analysis, speech pathology and clinical psychology but also at researchers, clinicians and caregivers for whom explicit knowledge of discourse patterns might be helpful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521889780
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/04/2010
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Elissa D. Asp is Associate Professor of English Linguistics in the English Department and Linguistics Coordinator of the Linguistics Program at Saint Mary's University. She is also Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University.

Jessica de Villiers is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Introduction to clinical discourse analysis; 2. Theoretical and clinical contexts; 3. Conversation analysis and intonation in English; 4. Grammar; 5. Contexts of culture, context of situation and phase; 6. Study design; 7. Differential diagnosis and monitoring; 8. Cognitive models, inferencing, and affect; 9. Modelling information across domains; Closings remarks.

Editorial Reviews

… an important contribution to demonstrating the value of discourse analysis for clinical diagnosis and for the study of patients with neurological and affective disorders ... a welcome synthesis of traditional, neuro-imaging, and linguistic methods.” —Jay Lemke, University of Michigan

“ … provides theoretical and descriptive tools for analyzing language in clinical syndromes that are clear but solidly grounded. The emphasis is on the autistic spectrum and Alzheimer’s disease but beyond these disorders and the specific analysis, the authors provide a way of thinking about language in clinical impairments. It presents numerous worked out linguistic analysis and offers suggestions for further specific research.” —Jonathan Fine, Department of English, Bar-Ilan University

From the Publisher