Book contents
- Dementia and Language
- Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics
- Dementia and Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Transcript notation key
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Dementia and Diagnostics
- Part 3 Dementia and Conversational Strategies
- Part 4 Dementia and Epistemics
- 9 Identifying Family Members in Photographs
- 10 ‘You Know This Better’
- 11 Maintaining Personhood and Authority in Everyday Talk of a Family Living with Dementia
- Part 5 Communicative Challenges in Everyday Social Life
- Index
- References
11 - Maintaining Personhood and Authority in Everyday Talk of a Family Living with Dementia
from Part 4 - Dementia and Epistemics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2024
Book contents
- Dementia and Language
- Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics
- Dementia and Language
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Transcript notation key
- Part 1 Introduction
- Part 2 Dementia and Diagnostics
- Part 3 Dementia and Conversational Strategies
- Part 4 Dementia and Epistemics
- 9 Identifying Family Members in Photographs
- 10 ‘You Know This Better’
- 11 Maintaining Personhood and Authority in Everyday Talk of a Family Living with Dementia
- Part 5 Communicative Challenges in Everyday Social Life
- Index
- References
Summary
Part of a wider study of family interaction, this chapter focuses on the interactional competence of a person living with dementia and some ways in which her independence is facilitated, and personhood validated, by her interlocutors. Drawing on a corpus of 15 hours of naturally occurring conversation, the study investigates the interactional practices of a woman diagnosed with dementia (Dana) in conversation with a variety of interlocutors including family caregivers, teenage grandchildren and community service providers. This chapter examines sequences of advice-giving, shared reminiscence and occasions of confusion. Dana first draws on a lifetime of expertise as a waitress to advise her granddaughter who has recently begun her first job; second, in a sequence of reminiscence, conversational partners describe a shared experience that Dana is able to assess and engage with despite potentially being unable to remember the details for herself; finally, the analysis shows how the actions of probing and testing can lead to interactional breakdown and confusion, but then note how Dana is able to recover from the situation by moving to a familiar topic and claiming epistemic authority.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dementia and LanguageThe Lived Experience in Interaction, pp. 249 - 266Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
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