Work

Examining Pauses in Alzheimer's Discourse

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: This discussion examines how speaker pauses, both filled and silent, are keyed to functions within a conversation and to functions within narration. In Alzheimer's discourse, pause-fillers can be both placeholders and hesitation markers; they may be ohs and ums or longer formulaic phrases. Extracts from the speech of 4 older women from the United States and from New Zealand are reviewed for changes in syntactic complexity, for retention of story components, and for pauses. The extracts illustrate these functions for silent pauses: as word-finding; as planning at word, phrase, and narrative component levels; and as pragmatic compensation as other interactional and narrative skills decrease.

Source: American Journal of Alzheimer s Disease & Other Dementias®

DOI: 10.1177/1533317508328138

Authors: Boyd H. Davis, Margaret Maclagan

Institutions: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, University of Canterbury

Language: English

Topic: Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies

Subfield: Language and Linguistics

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: U.S. National Library of Medicine

Award: Carolinas Conversations: A Multiethnic Digital Corpus of Speech for Older Persons