The best of both worlds: Clinical implications of classical and qualitative paradigms in aphasiology
Issue: Vol 8 No. 1 (2017) .
Journal: Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders
Subject Areas: Linguistics
DOI: 10.1558/jircd.30969
Abstract:
This article explores two theoretical perspectives on aphasia. The first tradition we consider could be labeled ‘classical aphasiology’. Several beliefs run through studies published within this paradigm. Our field’s history as a medical specialty committed to etic modes of understanding fosters a construal of aphasia as an impairment caused by brain injury. Since researchers are informed by neuropsycholinguistic theories of linguistics, they tend to view the person diagnosed with communication disability as an individual processor of language. An early association with positivism fostered the assumption that experiments in carefully controlled environments, which try to negate the effect of contextual variables as much as possible, can generate insights about how best to view and remediate adult neurogenic language disorders. Our second area of focus here is a newer approach developed over the last 25 years or so. Fields such as anthropology (Goodwin, 2004), ethnography (Simmons-Mackie and Damico, 1999a) for an overview), phenomenology (Fourie and Murphy, 2011), conversation analysis (Damico, Oelschlaeger, and Simmons-Mackie, 1999), grounded theory (Andersson and Fridlund, 2002; Hersh 2001) and systemic functional linguistics (Armstrong and Mortensen, 2006) are all examples of disciplines that have provided the lenses and other tools used by workers in what we will call ‘qualitative aphasiology’. A number of beliefs guide qualitative investigations of aphasia. An emic stance, as articulated by anthropologists and similar analysts, compels writers to describe aphasia in terms of the interpretations regarded as meaningful by people and families living with aphasia producing valuable, holistic understandings of this disorder. Sociolinguistic models of communication ensure that researchers conceive of language as a system for co-constructing social reality. A situated approach to understanding meaning-making necessitates a conceptualization of human beings as interactants whose behavior helps to shape, and is in turn shaped by, the contextual variables relevant in everyday life. Our analysis will elucidate some consequences of these two sets of beliefs. In particular, we demonstrate how epistemological orientation (speech pathology as an etic, medical enterprise vs. speech pathology as an emic, anthropological enterprise) impacts the characterization of aphasia itself and how ideas about the appropriate unit of analysis (individual processors vs. social builders) are linked to varying working definitions of language.
Author: Brent E. Archer, Ramona G. Olvera
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