Self-identity construction and pragmatic compensation in a Chinese DAT elder’s discourse
-
Lihe Huang
,
Qi Zhu
Abstract
This study explores how the identity is constructed of elders who have Dementia of the Alzheimer Type (DAT) by examining the communicative disorder in daily interactions with other interlocutors. Specifically, this paper evaluates a conversation between one Chinese elder with early-stage DAT and the interviewer. It analyzes the identity construction processes in the discourse in depth, using the age-identity taxonomy, self-identity representation theory, and the pragmatic emergentist model. Based on the case study, this paper confirms the five dimensions of age-identity taxonomy provided by Coupland as: (1) disclosure of chronological age, (2) age-related categories/role reference, (3) age-identity concerning health, decrement, and death, (4) adding time-past perspective, and (5) self-association with the past. Meanwhile, two more approaches to the age-identity taxonomy were developed, i.e., address behavior and cross-generational contrast. Self-identity to realize interactional goals is typically constructed at the individual level, although rarely at the relational level. The DAT elder conducts compensation in the interaction by adopting verbal and non-verbal strategies to bridge cognitive disorders such as memory loss, word-finding difficulty, or meeting the desire to enhance the pragmatic effects of their identity. This shows that the self-identity construction also facilitates the DAT elders in generating a discourse strategy when encountering pragmatic impairment.
Funding source: Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (NSSFC) "A Multimodal Corpus-based Study of the Pragmatic Competence of Elderly Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease"
Award Identifier / Grant number: 19CYY018
Funding source: Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (NSSFC) “The Study of Norm, Evaluation and Intervention of Chinese Elders’ Linguistic Competence”
Award Identifier / Grant number: 21&ZD294
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Conflict of interest: There is no potential conflict of interest involved in this study. The data was previously recorded by Hongyan Liu and Yueguo Gu, and it is now a part of Multimodal Corpus of Gerontic Discourse (MCGD) in China, currently being constructed by Lihe Huang. As one of the research series of Chinese elders's linguistic competence, this study has been approved by Research Ethnics Committee of School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University [No. tjsflrec202101].
| Text layout | |
|---|---|
| Symbol | Meaning |
| P | Patient (Zhang) |
| I | Interviewer |
| R (relations with the elder) | Other people participating in talk |
| (2.0)/(Pause) | Pause lasting 2 s/pause |
| [ | Interruption |
| ] | Being interrupted |
| (…) | Omission in the selected example |
| (?) | Unrecognizable information |
| Gaze | |
| <GD> | Gaze down |
| <GU> | Gaze up |
| <GS> | Gaze shift |
| <GR> | Gaze to person R (R is replaceable) e.g. <GI> Gaze to the interviewer |
| <GA> | Gaze away |
| Facial expression | |
| (laughing of I) | Laughing of the interviewer (I is replaceable) |
| Body movement | |
| <description of gesture> | Any gesture movement |
| <description of head movement> | Any head movement |
| <description of body position movement> | Any body-position movement |
| (description) Any other marked details |
|
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Communicating across educational boundaries: accommodation patterns in adolescents’ online interactions
- Tracking telecollaborative tasks through design, feedback, implementation, and reflection processes in pre-service language teacher education
- Individual versus pair work on L2 speech acts: production and cognitive processes
- Self-identity construction and pragmatic compensation in a Chinese DAT elder’s discourse
- Verbal and nonverbal disagreement in an ELF academic discussion task
- Relationships between struggling EFL writers’ motivation, self-regulated learning (SRL), and writing competence in Hong Kong primary schools
- Chinese university students’ self-regulated writing strategy use and EFL writing performance: influences of self-efficacy, gender, and major
- Does one size fit all? The scope and type of error in direct feedback effectiveness
- Immersing learners in English listening classroom: does self-regulated learning instruction make a difference?
- The pedagogical potential of speech-language therapy materials for the teaching of idiomatic expressions in a foreign language
- “This topic was inconsiderate of our culture”: Jordanian students’ perceptions of intercultural clashes in IELTS writing tests
- Positioning of female marriage immigrants in South Korea: a multimodal textbook analysis
- Hearing parents learning American Sign Language with their deaf children: a mixed-methods survey
- Teacher resilience and triple crises: Confucius Institute teachers’ lived experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic
- Translanguaging in self-praise on Chinese social media
