Aspects of the interactional dynamics of storytelling by persons with aphasia

Abstract

This article examines aspects of interactional storytelling by persons with aphasia in a face-to-face interaction, focusing on how they construct themselves as narrators. The analysis brings structural and interactional perspectives of narrative analysis together with a sociointeractional approach to frames and footings. The narratives under analysis were produced during a focus group discussion, in which two women with aphasia and one of the researchers participated. The transcription was done using a simplified version of CA conventions. Through the analysis of frame shifting and footings, we observed how participants with aphasia project themselves as narrators. We observed that they introduce stories marking topic coherence between conversation and narrative, as well as through glosses, repetitions of previous talk, and agreements with prior evaluations. The closing of the stories and the shift back to a conversational frame were made through evaluative codas and resuming previous topics. The researcher’s speech was marked by the presence of positive evaluations, demands for clarifi cation, and verifi cation of interpretations. In presenting these procedures, we intend to show how narrators with aphasia display the relevance of their stories to the local context and how, in doing so, they construct themselves as narrators. 

Key words: narrative, face-to-face interaction, aphasia.