Introduction

The text quoted above is a small section of a person's description of a picture of a woman washing dishes. The speaker has fluent aphasia. Fluent aphasia is an acquired language disorder that arises subsequent to brain damage. This chapter provides an introduction to the condition and a historical perspective.

Fluent aphasia is a distressing condition for the person who has it and for relatives and friends of that person. It is a relatively common type of aphasia, although there is little published about it compared with the literature on Broca's aphasia. Kertesz (1982:7) described Wernicke's aphasia as ‘a common aphasic impairment’ and Wallesch, Bak and Schulle-Mouting (1992) found that the majority of patients who survived for one year post-trauma had fluent aphasia. It is also one of the most common types of aphasia found in the first few weeks post trauma (Blanken, Dittmann, Grimm, Marshall and Wallesch 1993).