Collaborative storytelling with a person with aphasia

Abstract

Introduction: This study explores practices employed by a person with aphasia (PWA) and his wife to organize collaborative storytelling in a multiparty interaction. We identify practices that further the PWA’s agency – his impact on action – while he is telling a story together with his wife. Method: Using conversation analysis (CA), we carried out a case study of a successful storytelling sequence involving a 39-year-old man with anomic aphasia during a conversation with friends. Analysis: The PWA contributed to the storytelling by initiating the story sequence and by producing short but significant utterances in which he provided essential information and displayed epistemic authority. The spouse aligned with the PWA’s initiated actions and supported his agency by giving him room to speak, for example, by gaze retraction. Discussion: The analysis offers insight into practices that allowed this PWA to achieve agency. Our findings show that communication partner training could benefit from implementing activities such as collaborative storytelling.

A comparison between the use of two speech-generating devices: A non-speaking student's displayed communicative competence and agency in morning meetings in a compulsory school for children with severe learning disabilities

“…The questioning format, the continuers and the scaffolding yield opportunities for the student to control the turn, which mirrors Antaki and Crompton (2015) who found that supportive actions can create an agentive discourse in which individuals with disabilities are able to display communicative competence and agency. As Killmer et al (2021) suggested, the opportunity to display agency succeeds presenting communicative competence: our analysis showed that agency in SGD-mediated interaction assumed communicative competence.…”

“…Adam's scaffolding practice, positioning the activated SGD with a preferred response within reach for Rickard, creates an ‘agentive discourse’ in which communicative competence can be displayed (Antaki and Crompton, 2015; Killmer et al 2021). Rickard displays communicative competence and provides a well-timed second pair part of the question-answer sequence as he presses the SGD.…”

“…The practices were attention-generating and made the choices comprehensible for the service-users. Another group of researchers, Killmer et al (2021) examined the interaction between a man with aphasia and his wife; they suggested that communicative competence can create agency. Hence, if individuals with speech and language disabilities are provided with opportunities to display communicative competence, they may also display agency.…”

“…Flexibility also implies individuals’ possibility to foresee responses and thereby select and compose contributions that serve their motives. Agency and flexibility are interactional constructions that are jointly achieved (Antaki and Crompton, 2015; Killmer et al 2021).…”

“…Similar to research on displayed communicative competence, research on agency among individuals with speech and language disabilities is sparse. Yet, Killmer et al (2021) illustrated in their study that the man with aphasia could display agency when his wife supported his attempts to initiate storytelling by removing her gaze and thereby provided him with a prolonged interactional floor. In another study, Antaki and Crompton (2015) illustrated that when horticultural therapists treated service-users’ actions as meaningful and designed their turns as suggestions or requests of a joint purpose of the activity and used the inclusive ‘we’, service-users were presented as independent individuals with agency.…”