Feedback and common ground in conversational storytelling involving people with Alzheimer’s disease

Authors

  • Lars-Christer Hydén Linköping University
  • Charlotta Plejert Linköping University
  • Christina Samuelsson Linköping University
  • Linda Örulv Linköping University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v4i2.211

Keywords:

Alzheimer’s disease, common ground, conversation, conversation analysis, dementia, storytelling

Abstract

The present article focuses on feedback in storytelling involving people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and how feedback is related to the ways participants establish a common ground (Clark 1996) in interaction. The establishment of common ground is important in all kinds of interaction and becomes an especially intricate process if participants have AD, since the achievement of common ground requires the ability to draw from knowledge and experiences relating to past as well as present events; an ability that is often hampered by the disease. Analyses show that other aspects than the actual content of the conversation are important for the participants – for instance being together, supporting the positive identities both presented in the story and embodied in the socially rewarding activity that they manage to engage in, implying that the participants create and sustain a common ground not so much about the story-layer as of the storytelling activity.

Author Biographies

  • Lars-Christer Hydén, Linköping University

    Lars-Christer Hydén received his PhD in Psychology from Stockholm University, Sweden. His current position is as full professor of Social Psychology at Linköping University, Sweden, and as director of Center for Dementia Research (CEDER). His research primarily concerns how people with Alzheimer’s disease and their significant others interact and use language – especially narrative – as a way to sustain and negotiate identity and a sense of self. Recent publications: Hydén, L. C. and Antelius, E. (2011). Communicative disability and stories: Towards an embodied conception of narratives. Health 15: 594–609; Hydén, L. C. (2011). Narrative collaboration and scaffolding in dementia. Journal of Aging Studies, 25: 339–347.

  • Charlotta Plejert, Linköping University

    Charlotta Plejert received her PhD in Linguistics from Linköping University. She is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Culture and Communication, Linköping University, and at Center for Dementia Research (CEDER). Her research interests include Conversation Analysis, communicative disabilities in children and adults, and second language interaction and acquisition. Recent publications: Plejert, C. and Samuelsson, C. (2010). Language development in normal children and in disease – an interactional approach to typical language development and children with language impairment. In V. R. Preedy (ed.) Handbook of Growth and Growth Monitoring in Health and Disease, 1363-1377. New York: Springer; Plejert, C. and Sundqvist, A. (2013). A dialogical approach to Theory of Mind in aided and non-aided child interaction. In N. Norén, C. Samuelsson and C. Plejert (eds) Aided Communication in Everyday Interaction, 153–187. London: J&R Press.

  • Christina Samuelsson, Linköping University

    Christina Samuelsson received her PhD in Speech and Language Pathology from Lund University, Sweden. Her current position is associate professor of Speech and Language Pathology at Linköping University, Sweden, and at Center for Dementia Research (CEDER). Her research primarily concerns how people with communicative disabilities interact and use language, with a specific focus on prosody. Recent publications: Samuelsson, C., Plejert, C., Nettelbladt, U. and Anward, J. (2010). The role of interactional prosody in language testing activities in Swedish. In V. Stojanovik and J. Setter (eds) Prosody in Atypical Populations: Assessment and Remediation, 45–69. Albury: J&R Press. Samuelsson, C. and Hydén, L C. (2011). Intonational patterns of non-verbal vocalizations in people with dementia. American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, 26: 563–572.

  • Linda Örulv, Linköping University

    Linda Örulv received her PhD in Health and Society from Linköping University. She is currently a junior fellow researcher at Center for Dementia Research (CEDER), at the Department of Medical and Health Sciences. Her main research interests include meaning-making and identity work in situations where such things are brought to a head or are somehow challenged, as is the case with Alzheimer’s Disease and other age related progressive dementia disorders. Recent publications: Örulv, L. (2010). Placing the place, and placing oneself within it: (Dis)orientation and (dis)continuity in dementia. Dementia: the International Journal of Social Research and Practice, 9: 21–44; Örulv, L. (2012). Reframing dementia in Swedish self-help group conversations: Constructing . The International Journal of Self-help and Self-care, 6 (1): 9–41.

References

Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Beckett, S. (1954). Waiting for Godot. New York: Grove Press.

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clark, H. H. (1994). Discourse in production. In M. A. Gernsbacher (ed.) Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 985–1021. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Clark, H. H. (1996). Using Language. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620539

Clark, H. H. and Schaefer, E. F. (1987). Collaborating on contributions to conversations. Language and Cognitive Processes 2: 19–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01690968708406350

Clark, H. H. and Schaefer, E. F. (1989). Contributing to discourse. Cognitive Science 13: 259–294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1302_7

Clark, H. H. and Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition 22: 1–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(86)90010-7

Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1999). Coherent voicing: On prosody in conversational reported speech. In W. Bublitz and U. Lenk (eds) Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create It and How to Describe It, 11–32. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Duranti, A. (1986). The audience as co-author: An introduction. Text 6: 239–247.

Garfinkel, H. and Sacks, H. (1970). On formal structures of practical actions. In J. D. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian (eds) Theoretical Sociology, 337–366. New York: Appleton-Century Crofts.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goodwin, C. (1986). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text 6: 283–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1986.6.3.283

Goodwin, M H. (1997). Byplay: Negotiating evalutation in storytelling. In G. R. Guy, C. Feagin, D. Schiffrin and J. Baugh (eds) Towards a Social Science of Language: Papers in Honour of William Labov. Volume 2. Social Interaction and Discourse Structures, 77–102. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Gravano, A., Hirschberg, J. and Benus, S. (2012). Affirmative cue words in task-oriented dialogue. Computational Linguistics 38 (1): 1–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/COLI_a_00083

Guendozi, J. and Müller, N. (2005). Approaches to Discourse in Dementia. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers.

Gunthner, S. (1999). Polyphony and the ‘layering of voices’ in reported dialogues: An analysis of the use of prosodic devices in everyday reported speech. Journal of Pragmatics 31 (5): 685–708. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(98)00093-9

Hamilton, H. E. (1994). Conversations with an Alzheimer's Patient. An Interactional Sociolinguistic Study. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO 9780511627774

Hamilton, H. E. (2008). Narrative as snapshot. Glimpses into the past in Alzheimer’s discourse. Narrative Inquiry, 18 (1): 53–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ni.18.1.04ham

Heath, S-B. (1983). Ways with Words. Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. New York: Polity Press.

Heritage, J. and Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, 123–162. New York: Irvington.

Herman, D. (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. http://dx. doi.org/10.1002/9781444305920

Holmes, J. (1998). Narrative structure: Some contrasts between Maori and Pakeha story-telling. Multilingua 17 (1): 25–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mult.1998.17.1.25

Holt, E. (1996). Reporting on talk: The use of direct reported speech in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 29 (3): 219–245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi2903_2

Hutchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (2008). Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hydén, L-C. and Örulv, L. (2009). Narrative and identity in Alzheimer's disease: A case study. Journal of Aging Studies, 23: 205–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.01.001

Hydén, L-C. and Örulv, L. (2010). Interaction and narrative in dementia. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina and A. Nylund (eds) Telling Stories: Language, Narrative, and Social Life, 149–160. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Labov, W. (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Lehtonen, J. and Sajavaara, K. (1985). The silent Finn. In D. Tannen and M. Saville-Troike (eds) Perspectives on Silence, 193–201. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Local, J. (1996). Conversational phonetics: Some aspects of news receipts in everyday talk. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation. Interactional Studies, 177–230. Cambridge, MA:Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597862.007

Müller, N. and Mok, Z. (2012). Applying systemic functional linguistics to conversations with dementia: The linguistic construction of relationships between participants. Seminars in Speech and Language 33 (1): 5–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1055/s-0031-1301159

Norrick, N. R. (1997). Twice-told tales: Collaborative narration of familiar stories. Language in Society 26: 199–220. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S004740450002090X

Ochs, E., Schegloff, E. and Thompson, S. A. (1996). Interaction and Grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620874

Polanyi, L. (1985). Telling the American Story: A Structural and Cultural Analysis of Conversational Storytelling. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ramanathan, V. (1994). Interactional differences in Alzheimer’s discourse: An examination of AD speech across two audiences. Language in Society 23 (1): 31–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500017668

Ramanathan, V. (1995). Narrative well-formedness in Alzheimer’s discourse: An interactional examination across settings. Journal of Pragmatics 23: 395–419. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(94)00047-I

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., and Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (3–4): 696–735. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2307/412243

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO97 80511791208

Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. and Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language 53: 361–382.

Selting, M. (1996). Prosody as an activity-type distinctive signalling cue in conversation. The case of so-called 'astonished questions' in repair-initiation. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation. Interactional Studies, 231–270. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511597862.008

Small, J. A., Geldart, K. and Gutman, G. (2000). Communication between individuals with dementia and their caregivers during activities of daily living. American Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias 15: 291–302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 153331750001500511

Yngve, V. (1970). In getting a word in edgewise. Papers from the Sixth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.

Young, K. (1987). Taleworlds and Storyrealms. The Phenomenology of Narrative. Dordrecht: Martinius Nijhoff Publishers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3511-2

White, S. (1989). Backchannels across cultures: A study of American and Japanese. Language in Society 2: 59–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500013270

Downloads

Published

2013-09-17

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

© Equinox Publishing Ltd.

For information regarding our Open Access policy, click here.

How to Cite

Hydén, L.-C., Plejert, C., Samuelsson, C., & Örulv, L. (2013). Feedback and common ground in conversational storytelling involving people with Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders, 4(2), 211-247. https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v4i2.211

Most read articles by the same author(s)