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Narratives and reported speech produced by speakers with nonfluent aphasia
Johanna Vanhatapio
Master’s Thesis
English Philology
University of Oulu
Autumn 2014
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1. Introduction...................................................................................................................3
2. Data................................................................................................................................6
3. The Neurophysiology of Language.............................................................................10
3.1 Language Areas of the Cerebral Cortex................................................................11
3.2 Views of modern neurolinguistics.........................................................................13
3.3 Neuroimaging techniques......................................................................................15
4. Disorders of Language Production and Comprehension: Aphasia.............................19
4.1 Wernicke’s Aphasia...............................................................................................19
4.2 Broca’s Aphasia.....................................................................................................20
4.2.1 Agrammatism..................................................................................................21
4.2.2 Anomia............................................................................................................24
4.2.3 Articulation difficulties...................................................................................25
4.3 The Broca-Wernicke-Lichtheim model.................................................................26
5. Narratives....................................................................................................................28
5.1 Narrative as a text type.........................................................................................30
5.1.1 The Structural Elements of Narrative.............................................................32
5.2 Narratives produced by aphasic speakers..............................................................38
6. Reported Speech..........................................................................................................58
6.1 Direct and indirect reported speech.......................................................................58
6.2 Reported speech produced by aphasic speakers....................................................61
7. Conclusion...................................................................................................................73
References
Appendix 1: The Protocol for Story Narrative by AphasiaBank
Appendix 2: Key to AphasiaBank
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1. Introduction
While studying neuropsychology, I was introduced to the concept of aphasia, and found
it very interesting. I started reading more on the matter, and eventually wrote my
Candidate’s Thesis as a literary review on neurolinguistic and interactional views on
aphasia. Later, I also wrote a seminar paper regarding the degree of transitivity in
aphasic language, i.e., what proportion of the verbs produced by aphasic speakers could
take direct object. While looking for data for my seminar paper, I came across
AphasiaBank, a database for the study of aphasic language, and was able to gain access
to their data collection consisting of numerous transcribed video recordings of talk by
speakers with aphasia. While going through the data, it occurred to me that the
Cinderella stories narrated by aphasic speakers featured a vast amount of direct reported
speech. Aphasic speakers appeared to employ reported speech in some unusual
functions, which so-called normal speakers would perhaps communicate using other
linguistic means. This phenomenon of using direct reported speech in the narratives in
order to compensate for the restrictions caused by aphasic language eventually became
my main interest thus, the topic of this thesis.
Aphasia, a disturbance caused by localised brain dysfunction, has traditionally been
regarded as an infinite source of information about the neurolinguistic functions of the
human brain. For a linguist, working with data obtained from aphasic subjects can be
highly beneficial for achieving a better understanding not only about the mechanisms of
language deficits but also of the unimpaired linguistic abilities.
The data analysed in this thesis introduced me to narrative, which can be regarded as
one of the most fundamental methods of human communication. Narratives provide a
unique view into a personal experience of events, and thus, in addition to linguistics,
narratives have been studied in various fields of science, such as psychology and other
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social sciences. Narratology as an independent field of science has developed into a
versatile study of narrative as a genre. In this thesis I shall approach the aphasic and
non-aphasic narratives by analysing them according to the classical theory of structural
elements of narrative according to Labov and Waletzky (1967). This study will address
the following research questions: 1) Are speakers with nonfluent aphasia able to
produce a narrative featuring the structural elements of narrative described by Labov &
Waletzky? 2) Do the narratives produced by nonfluent aphasics feature more cases of
direct reported speech than the ones produced by control speakers? 3) Do speakers with
nonfluent aphasia use direct reported speech in narratives for functions that are unusual
for so-called normal speakers?
Understanding aphasic speakers can be rather challenging. In order to find suitable
subjects for the analysis presented in this paper, I watched several video clips from
AphasiaBank’s collections and soon came to realise that interpreting their speech in
order to analyse it in detail would be rather difficult, since many speakers in the
database are only able to produce almost unintelligible utterances exemplifying the
main symptoms of Broca’s aphasia: agrammatism, anomia and articulation difficulties
(see 4.2 Broca’s aphasia). Because analysing the aphasic narratives first appeared very
difficult, the focus of this thesis was originally going to be mostly theoretical. However,
over time comprehending their speech became easier, and eventually, knowing the
Cinderella story, I was able to identify events in the story and interpret what was
happening in each segment. Thus, I was eventually able to conduct an analysis for
Chapter 5 on the narrative structure and Chapter 6, on reported speech while the focus
of the thesis remains somewhat theoretical.
The results of the analysis will show that the narratives produced by nonfluent aphasic
speakers include the structural elements of narrative in a manner similar to control
speakers, even though identifying the elements was difficult in some occasions. The two
aphasic speakers employ direct reported speech more often than the two control
speakers, also in some unusual functions.
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I shall begin this thesis by briefly introducing my data of the Cinderella stories
produced by aphasic speakers in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, I will discuss some of the
basic features of the neurophysiology of language, to provide the reader with some
background information about language areas and neurolinguistic functions which shall
be further discussed in the following chapters. Some modern views of neurolinguistics
shall also be introduced, as well as the latest neuroimaging techniques. Chapter 4
describes aphasia as a disorder of language production and comprehension with an
emphasis on Broca’s aphasia and especially on its main symptom, agrammatism, which
shall be later discussed in numerous connections in the following chapters. In Chapter 5,
I shall discuss narrative as the genre of the data analysed in this thesis and introduce
some theories regarding narratology and especially Labov & Waletzky’s theory on the
structural elements of narrative before analysing the aphasic narratives. The aim of the
analysis conducted in Chapter 5 is to identify the structural elements in the narratives,
and describe the evaluative devices used by the speakers with aphasia. Chapter 6 will
focus on reported speech as the main topic of this study. I will introduce the main
characteristics of both indirect and direct reported speech before the analysing the direct
reported speech found in the aphasic narratives. In Chapter 7, I will conclude the results
of the analysis conducted for this thesis and discuss the limitations and successes of the
study.
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2. Data
The data for this paper consists of four video recorded interviews and their
transcriptions provided by AphasiaBank, a part of TalkBank dedicated to collecting data
of aphasic speech for research work aiming at obtaining advanced knowledge of
language in aphasia and improving evidence-based therapy for treating the disorder.1
The database consists of speech and language samples linked and synchronised with
transcripts in a multimedia format. The transcripts include excerpts after each line
identifying the part of speech of each word and specifying the morphology of affixes,
which has been added by using the MOR program. The database also features a
demographics collection presenting information about the background and health
condition of each speaker.
I had to privilege of gaining the access to AphasiaBank with the help of my instructor
Dr Elise Kärkkäinen, who contacted Professor Brian MacWhinney about the matter.
After I was granted the access, I went through a large number of the interviews in order
to find a part of the protocol suitable for exploring my topic of interest, which at the
time was syntax produced by Broca’s aphasics in general.
The parts of the interviews analysed in this paper were conducted as a section of the
AphasiaBank Protocol for testing aphasic speakers. This particular section of the
protocol is titled ‘Story Narrative’, and it is designed to be conducted with the help of
non-verbal clues, i.e. pictures illustrating central events from the Cinderella story in
order to support the speaker with details concerning the story structure as well as
descriptive features. The more specific Story Narrative Protocol by AphasiaBank is
presented in Appendix 1.
1 Web pages of TalkBank and AphasiaBank:http://www.talkbank.org/http://www.talkbank.org/AphasiaBank/
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The data analysed in this study will consist of video recordings and transcriptions of
four subjects narrating the Cinderella story. Two of the four subjects, from now on
referred to as Subject 1 and Subject 2 (video recordings by Kempler 2011), have been
diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, while the two remaining subjects represent the control
group and shall be referred to as Control 1 (video recorded by Wright 2011) and Control
2 (video recorded by Wright & Capilouto).
As stated above, Subjects 1 and 2 have been diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, i.e.
nonfluent or agrammatic aphasia. The demographics collection provides the following
information about the subjects: Subject 1 is a 60-year-old retired female coordinator for
a health care delivery company, suffering from aphasia caused by a stroke. Subject 1
does not show symptoms of apraxia. Subject 2 is a 65-year-old retired male civil
engineer, who is also aphasic because of a stroke. Subject 2 also shows signs of apraxia.
Control 1 is a 45-year-old non-aphasic male who has been working as a taxi driver.
Control 2 is a 64-year-old non-aphasic female who has been working as a district
business manager.
The demographics collection provides information about the subjects, such as their age,
race and sex, primary language and other language, as well as information about their
health condition and test results. However, the demographic collection is slightly
incomplete, i.e. the date of the recording is missing for some of the subjects.The various
test results presented in the demographics collection would most probably provide
information regarding the linguistic abilities of the two aphasic subjects, but it proved to
be rather challenging to interpret them without help from an expert. Thus, I cannot
comment on the severity of aphasia for Subject 1 and Subject 2, or how their degree of
aphasia affects the results of the analysis conducted for this study. Nevertheless, the
information in the demographics collection confirms that as stated above, Subjects 1
and 2 have been diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, and their speech is described as
nonfluent.
The video recorded interviews presented in the AphasiaBank have been transcribed in
the CHAT format (MacWhinney 2000). For this study, the transcripts of the narratives
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have been partly simplified from the original to provide the reader with examples as
clear as possible. The transcriptions of the Cinderella story by Subject 1 and Subject 2
have also been slightly modified to include prosodic features. The original form of the
data is shown in Example 1.
Example 1. A sample of data in its original form.
14 @G: Stroke15 *INV: do you remember when you had your stroke ? ▶16 *PAR: &uh it was +... ▶17 *PAR: you mean what &=ges:self I had ? ▶18 *PAR: I had something without +... ▶19 *PAR: I was out &=ges:pass_out &=imit:pass_out . ▶20 *PAR: got myself &=ges:drive rode through the pipəlɪnts@u [: ambulance]21 [* n:k] and they &=ges:shove ʃʌŋgə˞@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] [=! laughs]22 me . [+ gram] ▶23 *INV: wow . ▶24 *INV: how (a)bout your first memories after the stroke . ▶25 *INV: what can you tell me about that ? ▶26 *PAR: &uh good, generally good . [+ gram] ▶27 *PAR: but walking &=points:face &uh this . [+ gram] ▶28 *PAR: <the first> [//] &w when my &=points:self bɛgwɪl@u [: x@n] [*
n:uk] forget it . [+ jar] ▶29 *PAR: (be)cause I had no &k +//. ▶30 *PAR: &m my foot ones fizzled and stuffed . [+ jar] ▶31 *PAR: I couldn't talk . ▶32 *INV: tell me about your recovery . ▶33 *INV: what kinds of things have you done to get better since then ? ▶34 *PAR: generally walking . [+ gram] ▶35 *PAR: I had kwɔkɪŋ@u [: walking] [* p:n] sʌmlən@u [: someone] [* p:n]36 &=ges:self lɛdwɪl@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] again and (th)en an(d) +... ▶37 *PAR: and &uh finally I got it for kʊnhol@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] . [+ jar] ▶38 *PAR: ʃɪ@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] is good . [+ jar] ▶39 *PAR: just walking again sometimes is bad . ▶40 *PAR: just &puh or talk &i is &uh (.) kɪnol@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] +... ▶41 *PAR: &le some [//] I get . ▶42 *PAR: some I can't . ▶43 *PAR: and I just have to pɛnd@u [: x@n] [* n:uk] what I have an(d) have44 to get . [+ jar] ■
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The story of Cinderella is originally a European folktale, which has been written down
by several authors during last five centuries. According to Anderson (2000: 24), the
earliest written versions include Cenerentola by Giambattista Basile, published in 1634,
and Aschenputtel by the brothers Grim recorded in the 19th century, while the first
recorded version is presumed to be written by French author Charles Perrault in 1697,
under the name Cendrillon. In the 21st century the most well-known version of the story
is without a doubt the one presented in the Disney movie Cinderella. According to
MacWhinney et al. (2011), the book shown to each subject and control person at the
beginning of the narrative task is Walt Disney’s Cinderella (Grimes 2005).
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3. The Neurophysiology of Language
According to the modern prevailing view of the physiology of language, the production
and comprehension of language requires an integrated network of diverse areas in the
brain.
One of the main interests of psycholinguistic research is determining how linguistic
concepts, such as phonology, semantics or syntax, correlate to neurological processes
occurring in connection to language production and reception/comprehension. Modern
psycholinguistic research acknowledges several ways to approach the neurolinguistic
elements behind linguistic processes. The most traditional method of acquiring
knowledge of neurolinguistic and generally neurological functions is examining
language impairments caused by local brain lesions. Another approach to
psycholinguistic research is examining the language of so called normal speakers, which
was originally focused on exploring the errors or slips that they made in their speech.
The third, and probably the most modern way of measuring the brain functions taking
place during linguistic processes is utilising the methods of functional neuroimaging,
such as electromagnetic and hemodynamic functional neuroimaging techniques, which,
among other methods, will be further discussed later in this Chapter.
This chapter will first introduce some of the basic features of the cerebral cortex, the
seat of the higher cognitive functions of the human brain, in order to provide
background information for the neurolinguistic functions that shall be described later in
this thesis. Secondly, language areas, which have been the focus of the most traditional
field of neurolinguistic research, shall be described more in detail. Thirdly, after
discussing the traditional center-based neurolinguistic theories, some more modern
views of language production shall be introduced. As the last topic of this Chapter, I
shall introduce some of the neuroimaging techniques, which provide an important part
of the research data for today’s neurolinguists studying aphasia.
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3.1 Language Areas of the Cerebral Cortex
Cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of grey matter of the cerebral hemispheres,
which are the two symmetrical halves that constitute the major part of the brain (see e.g.
Carlson 2004: 82–83). Cerebral cortex is where most of the higher cognitive functions,
such as language production and perception, take place. Often the cerebral cortex is
divided into four lobes: the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe and
occipital lobe (see fig. 1).
Fig. 1 The division of the cerebral cortex (Epilepsy Foundation of America).
During the history of neuroscience, a great amount of research has been dedicated to the
physiology of language. Today it is known that several parts of the cerebral cortex are
involved in linguistic processes, but particularly two regions which are often called
language areas. According to modern knowledge (see e.g. Carlson 2004: 500), Broca’s
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area is essentially involved with speech production, whereas Wernicke’s area has a
significant role in speech perception.
Fig. 2. The cerebral cortex: the language areas and major anatomical landmarks
(adapted from Carlson 2004: 83).
Paul Broca discovered the first language area ever known while performing an autopsy
to a patient, who had been called Tan because that was the only syllable he was capable
of producing (see e.g. Carlson 2004: 11–12). Broca found a cyst on the brain, which had
been the cause of Tan’s long-standing condition, and thus became a legend on the field
of aphasiology. He suggested that this form of aphasia is “produced by a lesion of the
frontal association cortex” (Carlson 2004: 483).
Broca (as cited by Ingram 2007: 48) characterised the condition as an inability to
‘mobilize the organs of articulation to produce the spoken form of words’. What is
today known as Broca’s aphasia includes a wider range of language disorders than
Broca himself described (Ingram 2007: 48). According to Carlson (2004: 484–485)
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lesions in and around Broca’s area commonly produce three major speech deficits:
agrammatism, anomia and articulation difficulties. Agrammatism refers to a person’s
difficulty of producing grammatical speech. Anomia, which refers to word-finding
difficulty, is a common symptom to all known forms of aphasia. The third major feature
of Broca’s aphasia, difficulty of articulation, is often characterised by the patients’
tendency to alter the sequence of sounds. Each of these three features shall be further
discussed in section 4.2.
The other important language centre, Wernickes’s area, is a region of auditory
association cortex on the left temporal lobe that is essential in the comprehension of
words as well as the production of meaningful speech (see e.g. Carlson 2004: 486–487).
The area appears to be responsible for recognising a spoken word, which is a complex
task that relies on memories of sound sequences. Wernicke’s area is directly connected
to Broca’s area by a fibre tract located within the brain, beneath the cortical surface
(Carlson 2004: 81) that is known as the arcuate fasciculus (Ingram 2007: 51).
3.2 Views of modern neurolinguistics
Acknowledging that neuroimaging technology hardly existed in the late 19 th and early
20th century when the old Connectionist school led by Broca and Wernicke, described
above, presented their theories determining the language centers, it is hardly surprising
to find that the knowledge that we have today on the neuroanatomy of higher functions
of the central nervous system calls for us to reconsider our perception of language
production. Grodzinsky (2000: 1) notes that the clinical framework for aphasia studies
is still mostly based on the centre-based conception of language and the idea of the
perisylvian region (i.e. the area around the Sylvian fissure, which divides the frontal
lobe and the parietal lobe from the temporal lobe) as the location of language (see
section 3.1 and Fig. 1 and 2). Reviewing the history of the neurolinguistic science in
comparison to modern knowledge of neuroanatomy, Grodzinsky introduces a new
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perspective on language areas and especially on the role of Broca’s area in syntactic
processing.
According to Grodzinsky, psycholinguists have strived for a new outlook on human
linguistic abilities since the 1960s. Firstly, scholars such as Caramazza & Zurif (1976)
and Goodglass (1968, as cited by Grodzinsky 2000) turned their focus on the distinction
between linguistic levels of representation. Using linguistic concepts and experimental
techniques, they approached language as a set of structures presenting knowledge,
which could be divided into levels of phonological, semantic and syntactic analysis.
Grodzinsky (2000: 2) notes that, consequently, in the 1970s the perception of language
centres changed: they were now believed to contain analytical devices rather than to
house specific linguistic activities, e.g. the anterior language area, generally referred to
as the area surrounding Broca’s area, was now seen as the area responsible for syntax
rather than the motor aspects of speech. Grodzinsky (2000: 1–2) continues by pointing
out that the knowledge of neuroanatomy was also growing, and consequently it became
evident that the area responsible for mechanisms implicated in Broca’s aphasia
significantly exceeds what is commonly known as Broca’s area.
As recalled by Grodzinsky (2000: 2), from the early 1980s onwards the trend in
neurolinguistic research has been to explore language areas more deeply and to analyse
their functions from a more detailed linguistic perspective. In the case of syntax, the
mission of many researchers has been to determine more precisely the details of the
syntactic disruption in Broca’s aphasia. Grodzinsky (2000: 2) continues by stating that
concluding from the results of this research, syntax has appeared to be represented
solely in the left cerebral hemisphere, but the most part of it cannot be located in
Broca’s area. Grodzinsky (2000: 1–15) takes the detailed analysis of aphasia related
syntax disruption even further by stating that, based on a significant amount of
empirical evidence, Broca’s area has a very specific role in syntax production making
the syntactic disruption rather restricted. This can be concluded from the fact that
Broca’s aphasics tend to make mistakes producing tense forms but make no agreement
errors.
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3.3 Neuroimaging techniques
In early neuroscientific studies, many discoveries were made in autopsies by exploring
how lesions in the different parts of the encephalon (the brain) had affected the
behaviour of the deceased. This was the primary way of obtaining knowledge about the
site of damage causing a specific neurobehavioral syndrome, before the invention of
modern neuroimaging techniques that enable us to obtain a structural and/or functional
image of the brain (see e.g. Orrin & D’Esposito 2004: 52). When it comes to aphasia,
especially functional neuroimaging techniques have broadened our knowledge of the
neural mechanisms supporting language processing in aphasia resulting from brain
damage (Thompson & den Ouden 2008: 475).
Several new techniques for studying the living brain have been developed since the
beginning of the 20th century. According to Carlson (2004: 143), advanced X-ray
techniques and computer technology first led to the invention of computerized
tomography (CT), which is performed by using a ring-shaped device, which contains
and X-ray tube on one side and an X-ray receiver on the opposite side. The X-ray beam
passes through the patient’s head and the detector measures the amount of radioactivity
getting through and translates the results into pictures of the skull and its contents
(Carlson 2004: 143). In addition to X-ray and CT, some other more advanced new
techniques for exploring the living brain utilizing advanced electromagnetic and
hemodynamic technology shall be presented in this section.
The first technique to investigate correlations between language and the neurological
activity was electroencephalogram (Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 58). Carlson (2004: 147–
148) defines EEG as a graphic presentation of electrical brain potential recorded by
placing electrodes on the scalp or subdural electrodes on the surface of the brain, which
can be used for example to diagnose epilepsy or brain tumours or to observe a person’s
stage of consciousness. According to Rodden & Stemmer (2008: 58), electrical signals
portrayed in an EEG are generated by clusters of cortical pyramidal neurons. They also 15
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state that because electric signals are also generated elsewhere in the human body (e.g.
heart, muscles), the signals originating in cortical neurons must be filtered, i.e.
amplified and extracted from the other electrical activity. Rodden and Stemmer further
note that changes in a patient’s states of vigilance, e.g. arousal and consciousness,
appear as changes in the frequency and amplitude distribution of the EEG. For example,
an EEG for a person who is relaxed but awake would present alpha brain waves with a
relatively high amplitude of 7–12 Hz, while an EEG for a person in a more alert mental
state would present beta waves of lower amplitude of 13–20 Hz.
According to Rodden and Stemmer (2008: 59), while changes in alertness can be
identified from the electroencephalogram, advanced cognitive functions, such as
reading or watching a movie cannot be differentiated from each other by simply reading
the EEG, but require a special technique to make the subtle differences between the
signals detectable, such as the event-related potential technique. This common
technique to make smaller signals visible involves presenting a subject with a task, such
as deciding whether a sentence is semantically correct, and marking this on the EEG as
the onset of the event. Thus, brain activity related to this particular task can be identified
as the event related potentials (ERPs) induced by the presentation of a language
stimulus, i.e. a visual or auditory stimulus presenting language (Samar 2006: 326).
Rodden and Stemmer (2008: 59) note that in order to make the ERP with a relatively
small amplitude stand out from the raw background EEG, a large number of similar
events is usually repeated and the average for the ERPs is defined.
While EEG portrays the electric potentials generated by neurons,
magnetoencephalography (MEG) detects the magnetic fields produced by the electrical
activity in the brain (Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 60). According to Carlson (2004: 149),
neuromagnetometers used to perform MEGs contain several superconducting detectors
which can detect these exceedingly small magnetic fields. Based on the output from
these detectors, computer is able to calculate the origins of particular signals in the
brain. Whereas EEG signals spread out passing over tissues separating their sources,
MEG signals remain focused enabling an accurate device for localising and timing brain
activity, which is crucial for neurolinguistic research as the phenomena in the brain
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associated with functions such as syntax and semantics occur on extremely short time
scales (Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 60).
Compared to EEG and MEG described above, hemodynamic functional neuroimaging
techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron
emission topography (PET) present the more modern neuroimaging techniques. An
important feature of both of these techniques is that they are designed to capture
differences between two states of the brain, e.g. difference between the brain in the
“resting mode” and solving mathematical problems (Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 60).
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) utilizes the same principles as computer
tomography (CT) described above. However, whereas CT scanner uses X-rays, the MRI
scanner creates a strong magnetic field which passes through the patient’s head (Carlson
2004: 144). According to Carlson, the magnetic field causes “the nuclei of some atoms
in molecules in the body spin with a particular orientation”, which emit radio waves of
their own at different frequencies. When a radio frequency wave is passed though the
patient’s body, the MRI scanner detects the radiation from hydrogen atoms in different
concentrations in different tissues and uses the information to prepare images of slices
of the brain (Carlson 2004: 144). While MRI can be used to visualize structures of the
brain in great detail, fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging, is ideal for
capturing the altered brain activity resulting of some stimulus e.g. mathematical
calculations, since fMRI detects changes in blood oxygenation and flow occurring in
response to changes in neural activity (Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 62). In other words,
fMRI shows which areas in the brain are activated when exposed to certain stimulus.
Positron emission tomography, PET, can be used to measure metabolic activity in
different parts of the brain. In the beginning of the procedure, the patient is injected with
radioactive tracer compound, and then his/her head is placed in a scanner with an array
of detectors capable of registering incident gamma rays, i.e. positrons emitted as the
tracer compound decays (Carlson 2004: 150, Rodden & Stemmer 2008: 63). According
to Carlson, the computer visualises the results of a PET scan by localising the regions of
the brain which have taken up the radioactive substance and produces a picture of a
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slice of the brain according to the activity levels detected. The different colours in the
picture indicate different rates of uptake of the radioactive tracer compound, i.e.
different levels of activity (Carlson 2004: 150).
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4. Disorders of Language Production and Comprehension: Aphasia
Devinsky and D’Esposito (2004: 171) define aphasia in clinical terms as “a disturbance
of language formation and comprehension caused by localised brain dysfunction”. As
described above, according to the BWL model, aphasia is the main type of language
impairment caused by disconnections between the language centres. Using more
physiological terms, and having the latest knowledge from the field of neuroscience and
particularly brain mapping, it can be described as a disorder in the language network
that disrupts the linguistic processing which creates language, symbols and grammar
from nonverbal notions and, correspondingly, produces nonverbal thought from
language (Devinsky & D’Esposito 2004: 171).
This chapter will introduce the two most well-known types of aphasia, Broca’s aphasia
and Wernicke’s aphasia, which are complementary to each other in many ways (Ingram
2007: 51). As Fig. 3 illustrates, aphasia syndromes also include numerous other types of
aphasia, such as conduction aphasia and the transcortical aphasias (Pratt & Whitaker
2006). Since the focus of this study is on language production rather than
comprehension, Wernicke’s aphasia will only be described briefly in order to provide a
point of comparison to Broca’s aphasia, which will be described in more detail.
4.1 Wernicke’s Aphasia
According to Devinsky and D’Esposito (2004: 181), patients with Wernicke’s aphasia
speak fluently in most cases and their prosody and articulation are normal, which can
sometimes make their condition difficult to recognise. However, patients often speak
excessively and their language is impaired by paraphasia, the erroneous substitution of
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syllables or words. Their speech is also coloured by many neologisms, newly coined
words, which can also be found in the speech sample provided by Ingram (2007).
Example 2. Speech sample of Wernicke’s aphasia.
What brings you to hospital?Boy, I’m sweating. I’m awful nervous, you know, once in a while I get caughtup, I can’t mention the tarripoi, a month ago, quite a little, I’ve done a lotwell, I impose a lot, while, on the other hand, you know what I mean, I haveto run around, look it over, trebbin and all that sort of stuff.Thank you Mr X. I want to ask you a few —Oh sure, go ahead, any old think you want. If I could I would. Oh, I’m takingthe word the wrong way to say, all of the barbers here whenever they stopyou its going around and around, if you know what I mean, that is tying andtying for repucer, repuceration, well, we were trying the best that we couldwhile another time it was with the beds over there the same thing...(Ingram 2007: 49–50.)
People with Wernicke’s aphasia have impaired comprehension (see e.g. Devinsky and
D’Esposito 2004: 181), which is perhaps the most significant difference between
Wernicke’s aphasia and Broca’s aphasia.
4.2 Broca’s Aphasia
Broca’s area, one of the two most important language centres in the brain that have been
introduced above, has been the subject of a vast amount of research during the history of
neuroscience because it has been made visible by a specific language disorder. As stated
by Carlson (2004: 483), Devinsky & D’Esposito (2004: 177) and many others, Broca’s
aphasia is characterised by slow, effortful, nonfluent speech.
Below are three samples taken from free narrative transcripts of the patients’ speech,
provided again by Ingram (2007: 49).
Example 3. Speech samples of Broca’s aphasia.
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What brought you to hospital?Yes... ah... Monday... ah... Dad... Peter Hogan, and Dad...ah...hospital... and ah... Wednesday... Wednesday nine o’clock and ahThursday... ten o’clock ah doctors... two... two... an doctors and...ah... teeth... yah... And a doctor an girl... and gums, an I.
Describe your job.Lower Falls... Maine... Paper. Four hundred tons a day! and ah... sulphurmachines, and ah... wood... Two weeks and eight hours. Eight hours...no! Twelve hours, fifteen hours... workin... workin... workin! Yes, andah... sulphur and... Ah wood. Ah... handlin! And ah sick, four years ago.
Telling about a recent movie:Odessa! A swindler! down there... to study...the sea... (gesture ofdiving)... into... a diver! Armenia... a ship... went...oh! Batum!a girl...ah! Policeman...ah...I know! ...cashier... money... ah!cigarettes... I know... this guy...
The language impairments present in these samples will be discussed later in this
chapter in connection with each of the three major speech deficits in Broca’s aphasia:
agrammatism, anomia and articulation difficulties.
4.2.1 Agrammatism
Agrammatism, a pattern of aphasic speech production, gives the aphasic language a
simplified appearance, as seen e.g. in Example 3. Wilkinson et al. (2010: 58) note that
agrammatism can present as the omission of function words and grammatical affixes
and syntactical simplification. In this section I shall discuss some of these features.
The nonfluency in the speech of a person suffering from Broca’s aphasia is largely due
to agrammatism, which Devinsky & D’Esposito define as “the inability to organize
written or spoken words into sentences according to grammatical rules, and the misuse
of, or failure to use, grammatical words” (2004: 178). According to Kolk (2006: 119),
agrammatism does not only affect speech production, but also comprehension. This is
significant, because problems in language comprehension have traditionally been
regarded as something that is typical of Wernicke’s aphasia, whereas individuals with
Broca’s aphasia usually have intact comprehension (Carlson 2004, 482). In the early
1970’s Zurif and Caramazza claimed that Broca’s aphasics possess no knowledge of 21
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syntactical rules. The patients appeared to be unable to comprehend reversible sentences
such as “the cat that the dog chased was black” (Caramazza and Zurif 1976, cited by
Kolk 2006: 119). Zurif and Caramazza’s claim led to many studies in the following
years. Miceli et al. (1983, cited by Kolk 2006:119) discovered that problems in
comprehension experienced by individuals with Broca’s aphasia can actually be
separated from problems in production. Certain aphasiologists with linguistic
background, for instance Grodzinsky (1989, cited by Kolk 2006: 119), suggested that it
was also possible for only specific subsets of linguistic competence to be lost, instead of
a loss of all the knowledge of syntactical rules.
The study conducted by Linebarger et al. (1983 cited by Kolk 2006: 120) started the
processing approach in agrammatism by claiming that it is not actually the knowledge
of grammatical rules that is impaired but the processing of this knowledge. They
observed that many agrammatic individuals who performed at chance in comprehending
reversible sentences had no problem in judging the grammaticality of the sentences.
Thus, the authors concluded that agrammatism did not necessarily cause a total loss of
linguistic competence. This led to the mapping hypothesis: the impairment did not affect
syntax but the operations by which the syntactic level of representation was mapped
onto the semantic level. Consequently, the semantic level lacked the information of the
assigned thematic roles of nouns. This kind of mapping would be necessary in terms of
comprehension but not for grammaticality judgment. In addition, Linebarger et al. also
noted that comprehension can be viewed as a double task because it involves both
syntactic and semantic processing, and thus the so called “dual-task effect” should be
taken into consideration. In comparison, grammaticality judgment only depends on
syntactic processing, which might explain why it seemed to be easier for the
agrammatic patients than comprehending reversible sentences.
Saffran et al. (1998, as cited by Kolk 2006:120) discovered another comprehension
related feature regarding agrammatism: even single-clause sentences can sometimes be
surprisingly difficult for agrammatic patients to comprehend. These single-clause
sentences include particularly sentences such as “the painting disliked the artist”. The
authors claimed, naturally, that with this kind of sentences there is a strong bias to
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accept the interpretation indicated by the individual word meanings. Thus, an
agrammatic patient is prone to interpret the sentence as “the artist disliked the artist”.
This kind of interpretation is avoided by unimpaired individuals because of the
correcting influence of syntactic analysis, which eliminates the interpretation that is
inconsistent with the syntactic structure. According to Saffran et al., the correcting
influence is reduced in aphasics “because of a pathological decrease in the spread of
activation from the syntactic constituents to the units that represent syntactic roles”
(1998: 290, cited by Kolk 2006:120). Since the first NP most often carries the agent
role, there is a bias for both aphasic as well as non-aphasic individuals to interpret the
first NP as an agent. Agrammatic patients have a strong tendency for this because of
their resource limitation.
The resource limitation hypothesis, as described above by Saffran et al. (1998), has been
studied in terms of grammaticality judgment in many ways. For instance, studies on the
interpretation of pronouns have provided evidence for the presence of a resource
limitation. It has been discovered that in order to interpret pronouns correctly, one must
be able to integrate syntactic and discourse-related operations. Since pronoun
interpretation requires various linguistic operations, it probably poses difficulties for
agrammatic patients. The nature of the resource limitation has frequently been
characterised by the timing hypothesis, which states that the underlying deficit is caused
by either a fast decay or a slow retrieval of syntactic information. Either of these deficits
would reduce the period of time for which syntactic information is available for
processes such as the assignment of thematic roles or referential operations.
According to Kolk (2006: 122), symptoms of agrammatism in language production
have been categorised into three main types. The first type is a reduced alternation of
grammatical forms, i.e. syntactic symptoms, which causes sentences to have little
subordination or phrasal complexity. The second type is the omission of function words
and inflections, which can be regarded as morphological symptoms. The third is the
slow rate of speech, i.e. the rate symptom. Each of these symptoms contributes to
making the verbal output in Broca’s aphasia telegraphic (Devinsky & D’Esposito 2004:
177). The term ‘telegraphic’ derives from the fact that transcribed agrammatic speech
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has the outlook of a telegram, as if the peculiar quality of speech “was motivated by the
need to conserve cost or effort” (Ingram 2007: 49).
The examples above illustrate all of the symptoms described above by Kolk (2006:
122). Syntactic symptoms are easily discovered, since none of the samples contains any
complex or compound sentences, i.e. they are simple sentences. In samples 2 and 3
there is also an apparent tendency to use exclamations, such as “...workin... workin...
workin” and “Odessa! ”. Morphological symptoms are clearly present, since hardly any
grammatical words or inflections can be found in the examples. In the first and second
sample and occurs a few times, as well as the indeterminate articles a and an. The rate
symptoms are illustrated by the numerous pauses between words.
The agrammatic deficits in language production described above vary greatly between
patients. Some agrammatic patients show these symptoms only slightly more often than
a normal speaker, whereas with some patients the symptoms can be observed in almost
all the language they produce, or try to produce. Similarly to agrammatism in language
comprehension, the resource limitation hypothesis as well as the timing hypothesis can
be applied to language production as well. Another interesting hypothesis related to
agrammatic language production is the ellipsis hypothesis. According to Kolk (2006:
124), agrammatic speakers have a tendency to use elliptical constructions, utterances
where either tense or finiteness is absent, probably because “they lack the capacity to
generate sufficient brain activation to produce their complete counterparts.”
4.2.2 Anomia
Pratt & Whitaker (2006) define anomia as a language impairment that causes “failure to
name or to retrieve names and/or nouns”. It is an impairment that can be found in any
variety of aphasia. According to Pratt & Whitaker anomic patients may be otherwise
fully competent in speech, but unable to produce substantive words. Consequently, their
utterances are often semantically “empty”. This can also be seen in the following
sample, originally provided by Goodglass (1968, cited by Buckingham 1979: 274).
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Example. 4. Anomic speech.
Well, I had trouble with . . . oh, almost everything that happenedfrom the . . . eh, eh, . . . . Golly, the word I can remember, youknow, is ah . . . When I had the . . . ah biggest . . . ah . . . trouble with,and I still have a . . . the ah . . . different . . . . The things Iwant to say . . . ah . . . The way I say things, but I understandmostly things, most of them and what the things are.
The speaker uses only few nouns and seems to replace words he cannot retrieve by
using ‘thing(s)’ instead. He/she speaks quite fluently without many agrammatisms, but
the word retrieval is clearly impaired. Since anomia is particularly a deficit in word
finding, it also contributes to the large number of pauses in speech, which can also be
found in Example 4. Another symptom of word retrieval difficulties is the numerous
utters expressing hesitation, such as ah, oh and eh.
4.2.3 Articulation difficulties
According to Carlson (2004: 485), patients with Broca’s aphasia often suffer from
various articulation difficulties. He further states that it is common that they alter the
sequence of sounds, for example lipstick might be pronounced “likstip”). Patients
recognise the errors they make in their speech and usually attempt to correct them
Carlson 2004: 485).
According to Dronkers (1996, as cited by Carlson 2004: 485) a location for control on
the insular cortex is situated on the cerebral hemisphere. It has been stated that the
articulation difficulties related to aphasia are caused by apraxia of speech, which is “an
impairment in the ability to program movements of the tongue, lips, and throat that are
required to produce the proper sequence of speech sounds” (Carlson 2004: 486). In
other words, speakers with apraxia find it difficult to produce the correct sounds and
syllables and arrange them into the correct order to form words.
To summarise, Broca’s aphasia and Wernicke’s aphasia are complementary to each
other in many ways. Wernicke’s aphasia is characterised with fluent and excessive
speech, erroneous substitution of syllables or word, and newly coined words. What is
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significant in Wernicke’s aphasia is that it affects one’s comprehension. Thus, even
though individuals with Wernicke’s aphasia may not first appear to have any kind of
language impairment, the language they produce is often semantically faulty and
difficult for other people to understand. Generally speaking, Broca’s aphasia is a
disorder of speech production and individuals suffering from it do not normally have
problems of comprehension. Nevertheless, as stated above, individuals with Broca’s
aphasia may also experience some problems of comprehension, for example in
connection with the understanding of syntactical rules.
4.3 The Broca-Wernicke-Lichtheim model
The relation of Wernicke’s area to Broca’s area provides the very basis for the notion of
human language. Ingram (2007: 40–58) describes the most classical model for
understanding how language is represented in the brain, the Broca-Wernicke-Lichtheim
model (BWL, also known as the Wernicke-Lichtheim model, see fig. 3), which was
formulated around the turn of the previous century. He further claims that although a
great amount of progress has been made in the field after the original BWL model was
created, it is still a useful tool for contemporary cognitive neurolinguistics. Ingram
states that the continued utility of the model can be derived from the fact that it includes
all the foundational notions of modern functional neurolinguistics, which include the
functional relations between primary, the sensory and motor areas of the cerebral cortex,
as well as the secondary association areas and the structural and functional connections
of both of these to other ‘higher’ cortical regions and to the subcortical structures of the
brain (see fig. 2 to see how these areas and regions are situated).
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Fig. 3. The (Broca-)Wernicke-Lichtheim model (2007: 52).
Ingram (2007: 40–58) claims that according to the BWL model, localised brain lesions
can cause various types of disconnections between the two language centres, thus
inducing different kinds of language impairments. He also points out that a
neuropsychological model known as the single word processing model could possibly
be regarded as an updated version of the BWL model. In fact, Ingram claims that the
single word processing model is “a close literal translation of the BWL model (as
augmented by Lichtheim)” (2007: 59).
To summarise, language areas have traditionally played a major role in neurolinguistic
research. Today it is acknowledged that Broca’s area is essentially involved with speech
production, whereas Wernicke’s area has a significant role in speech perception. The
relation between the major language centres of the brain is portrayed in the BWL model
by introducing various kinds of language impairments caused by disconnections in
neurolinguistic pathways.
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5. Narratives
In this chapter I shall I shall discuss narrative as a genre the data analysed in this thesis
and introduce some theories regarding narratology and especially Labov & Waletzky’s
(1967) theory on the structural elements of narrative. It should be noted that while
plenty of research has been done on story-telling in everyday conversation (e.g.
Mandelbaum 1989, Ochs & Capps 2001), the focus of the theories and analysis
presented in this thesis is in narratives produced as monologues and by request, and
thus, the phenomena connected to narratives and interaction shall not be discussed.
Narrative can be perceived as one of the most fundamental methods of human
communication. Animals are known to communicate with each other, but what
separates our language from theirs is the human ability to communicate displacement.,
i.e. events which do not take place in our immediate here-and-now (Toolan 2006: 459).
Being such a crucial device of the human language ability, narratives have been studied
throughout the history, and narratology has developed into a versatile study of narrative
as a genre. In this chapter I shall first explore the classical structural narrative theorists
and then discuss Labov & Waletzky’s theory (1967) which forms the basis for all the
modern research on narrative.
According to De Fina & Geourgakopoulou (2012: 2), many classical narratologists,
such as Bal, Genette and Prince, defined story as a series of events which are ordered
both causally and temporally. The notion of event as the basic unit of story structure
refers to a predominance of action, which derives from Poetics by Aristotle, the Greek
Philosopher, who emphasised the meaning of plot over characters. Classical
narratologists were also influenced by Russian formalists such as Shklovsky and Propp,
who acknowledged the way a story is told as a separate concept of what is told in a
story (see e.g. De Fina & Gourgakopolou 2012: 3, Toolan 2006: 460–461).
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Narratology has been acknowledged as an independent field of research since the 1960s
(see e.g. 2009). According to Meister (2009: 329), the period of time between mid-
1960s and early 1980s is considered the classical phase of narratology, when
narratologists were especially interested in finding narrative universals, which is still
visible in the early 1990s notion of narratology as a set of general statements regarding
narrative as a genre, narrating and the structure of the narrative. Meister notes that in the
beginning of the 21st century, narratology could be regarded as its own disciple instead
of a method or a single theory. Postclassical narratologists have extended the focus of
narratology from universals to studying narrative’s cognitive functions and its relation
to theory of knowledge, i.e. epistemology, and are also interested in “the historicity and
contextuality of modes of narrative representation” (Meister 2009: 330).
Different theories offer various, often conflicting, definitions of narrative. Toolan
(2006: 460) proposes, a brief characterisation of the concept, adapted from theories of
the structuralist Todorov, as follows:
a perceived sequence of nonrandomly connected events, i.e. of described states or conditions which undergo changes (into some different states or conditions).
According to Toolan (2006: 460), the ‘nonrandom connection’ refers to some
connectedness perceived as motivated and meaningful. Another corresponding
definition introduced by Toolan (2006: 460) was the starting point of a famous study by
Propp, one of the early 20th-century Russian Formalists, who regarded narrative as a text
portraying a change from one state to a new state that has been modified in one way or
another.
More modern theories on narratives include story grammar, which, according to Coelho
& Flewellyn (2003: 174) consists of the regularities in the internal structure of stories
guiding a reader’s comprehension and perception of temporal and causal relationships
between the characters and events, i.e., a set of rules defining the elements of the story
and the connections between them. Story grammar appears to be based on Labov’s
views on narrative and his theory on the structural elements of narrative, which shall be
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discussed in section 5.1 and applied in section 5.2 for the analysis of narratives
produced by aphasic speakers.
5.1 Narrative as a text type
Narratology studies story as a text-type that is separate from other genres and thus, its
main interest is defining what a story is (De Fina & Georgakopoulou 2012: 2), which
has often been done via structural means, for example by Labov and Waletzky, who
introduce their classical views of narrative analysis in Narrative Analysis: Oral
Versions of Personal Experience (1967). According to Labov and Waletzky, in order to
analyse and understand complex narratives, the most fundamental narrative structures
must be analysed in connection to their functions, which can be discovered in oral
versions of personal experiences (1967: 12). Labov and Waletzky define narrative as a
method of exploring past events by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the
sequence of events which actually happened in reality. They also note that a narrative
normally also serves “an additional function of personal interest determined by a
stimulus in the social context in which the narrative occurs”, which can be either
referential or evaluative (Labov & Waletzky 1967: 13).
As stated above, in Labov and Waletzky’s theory (1967), narratives are formed by
matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of actual events. For example, a
narrative telling of the story of Cinderella might include something like this (my
example):
Example 5.
a) The Prince was mingling at the ball roomb) and then Cinderella arrivedc) and they dancedd) and then she had to leave
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What makes the example a narrative is that it features four independent clauses which
match the order of the events in question. It should be noted that it is also possible to tell
about the same events using other syntactic means. For example:
Example 6.
a) Cinderella arrived b) while the Prince was mingling at the ball roomc) but then she had to leaved) even though they were dancing
If two of the narrative clauses are reversed the original semantic interpretation is
altered: They danced, and then she had to leave - And then she had to leave and they
danced. According to Labov and Waletzky (1967: 28) two temporally ordered clauses
such as these form a minimal narrative, since changing their order results in a different
semantic interpretation of the temporal sequence of events, i.e. there is a temporal
juncture between the two clauses.
In addition to the concept of narrative clauses, Labov and Waletzky (1967: 22)
introduce the notion of a free clause, which does not contain a temporal juncture, and
can thus be placed more freely. For example:
Example 7.
a) Cinderella was very beautiful.b) She came to the ballc) and the Prince fell in love with her.
In this example we have a minimal narrative consisting of narrative clauses b) and c)
and a free clause a), which could be placed after b) or c) without altering the semantic
interpretation of the temporal order. The fact that Cinderella was very beautiful is
equally true after she enters the ball and also after the Prince falls in love with her.
Labov (1972) notes that clauses containing used to, would and the general present
cannot support a narrative and thus cannot be considered as narrative clauses.
Subordinate clauses cannot act as narrative clauses because a clause that is subordinate
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to another cannot be semantically altered by reversing it. Consequently, it can be
concluded that only independent clauses can act as narrative clauses.
Labov and Waletzky (1967: 22) also introduced the concept of coordinate clauses.
While narrative clause has a fixed temporal juncture and free clause can be placed
anywhere in the narrative sequence, coordinate clauses can be interchanged without any
change in temporal sequence. For example:
Example 8.
a) Cinderella entered the ballroomb) and she looked very beautifulc) and she was wearing the most amazing ball gown
If the order of clauses b and c is reversed, it does not change the temporal sequence of
the narrative:
Example 9.
a) Cinderella entered the ballroomb) and she was wearing the most amazing ball gownc) and she looked very beautiful
Therefore, according to Labov and Waletzky (1967: 23) it can be concluded that
because clauses b and c have what they call identical displacement sets, they can be
referred to as coordinate clauses.
5.1.1 The Structural Elements of Narrative
According to Labov and Waletzky (1967, Labov 1972), several elements of narrative
structure, i.e. the superstructure, can be found in more developed types of narrative,
including the abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result and the coda.
The elements included in the narrative superstructure vary between different theories,
e.g. Olness and Ulatowska (2011: 1398) list the orientation or setting, initiating event,
complicating action, result or resolution and the coda as the key concepts of
superstructure. However, the theory and analysis of the narrative structural elements in
this thesis will follow the superstructure by Labov and Waletzky, presented above.
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In their seminal article Labov and Waletzky place orientation as the very first element to
occur in a narrative (1967: 32). However, in Language in the Inner City – Studies in the
Black English Vernacular, Labov introduces the concept of abstract and notes that if
there is one, it occurs in the very beginning of the narrative, answering the underlying
question what was this about? (1972: 363) For Cinderella story, the abstract could be
for example: Once upon a time, there was this poor girl, who the Prince fell in love
with.
Orientation takes place after abstract describing the time, place, the persons present,
their activities or the situation answering questions such as who, when, what or where.
Labov and Waletzky (1967: 32) further note that this kind of information typically
acting as orientation can be included in some of the first narrative clauses but it can also
be given in the form of free clauses, for example: Cinderella was beautiful (free clause).
Cinderella’s stepsisters were mean and ugly (free clause). One day, the Prince invited
all of them to attend a ball at his castle (narrative clause). After seeing the invitation, the
stepsisters told Cinderella that she could not go (narrative clause).
According to Labov and Waletzky (1967: 32), most of the narrative clauses usually
depict a series of events which could be perceived as complications or complicating
actions, which may occur in several cycles in a series of events. Since complication
implies a turning point of some kind, it could be something like: The stepsisters as well
as their mother were going to the ball, but they said Cinderella couldn’t go because she
didn’t have an appropriate dress.
Labov and Waletzky (1967: 33) discuss the term evaluation extensively, defining it as
the means used to indicate the point of the narrative. Evaluation informs us of why the
narrative was told, answering the question so what? Exploring evaluation in the case of
fairy tales differs from personal narratives, since narratives of vicarious experiences are
often left unevaluated (Labov and Waletzky 1967: 34). In the Cinderella story,
evaluation could simply consist of a single exclamation such as Poor Cinderella!
According to Labov and Waletzky (1967: 39), the result or resolution is the portion of
the narrative sequence following the evaluation. They note that in the case of evaluation
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being the last element of the narrative, the resolution section merges with the
evaluation. The resolution of Cinderella story could be narrated like this, for example:
Luckily, her Fairy Godmother came to rescue and turned her old rags into a
magnificent ball gown. Cinderella went to the ball and the Prince fell in love with her.
Labov and Waletzky (1967: 39) note that many stories end with a resolution section, but
others have another concluding element referred to as the coda. The coda often consists
of free clauses and contains “general observations or show the effects of the events on
the narrator” (Labov 1972: 365). According to Labov and Waletzky, the coda is needed
“for returning the verbal perspective to the present moment”.
Table 1. The structural elements of narrative according to Labov and Waletzky.
Structural element Example
1. Abstract Once upon a time, there was this poor
girl, who the Prince fell in love with.
2. Orientation She lived with her mean stepmother and
two stepsisters. One day it was announced
that the Prince was going to have a ball.
3. Complication action The stepsisters as well as their mother
were going to the ball, but they said
Cinderella couldn’t go because she didn’t
have an appropriate dress.
4. Evaluation Poor Cinderella!
5. Result or resolution Luckily, her Fairy Godmother came to
rescue and turned her old rags into a
magnificent ball gown. Cinderella went to
the ball and the Prince fell in love with
her.
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6. Coda The end.
Next, narratives by Control 1 and 2 shall be analysed based on the structural elements
by Labov & Waletzky. Example 10 presents the structural elements in Cinderella story
as told by Control 1.
Example 10. Cinderella Story. Control 1.
1 @G: Cinderella Story
2 *CONTR1: this is the story about Cinderella a nice young3 lady who wanted to go to the ball but she had4 lived with an evil stepmom and three evil5 stepsisters
ABSTRACT + ORIENTATION
6 &um she was made to clean the house while7 the stepsisters got ready for the ball
COMPLICATION
8 somehow she found an invitation to go to the 9 ball or someone invited her 10 she went to the ball and looked very pretty
COMPLICATION
11 and up-- suddenly a Prince rode up and said 12 I'm looking for this person who's supposed to 13 be my Princess 14 I know it's her if her foot fits in the shoe 15 he came over and tried the shoe on Cinderella
COMPLICATION
16 it was the right fit and turned out that was his 17 Princess 18 and they went off and she became a gold digger 19 and rescued 20 they settle down (laughs)
RESOLUTION
20 @End
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Control 1 narrates his version of the Cinderella story in an economical manner featuring
such grammatical structures that would be expected from a speaker with no speech-
related impairment. Even though Control 1 has no speech-related impairment,
identifying narrative structures in his narrative is not as simple as one might expect. On
lines 2–5 he summarises the setting for the story while describing the persons and the
situation, thus producing both the abstract and the orientation for the narrative. It is
more difficult to identify the complicating event, especially since there appears to be
several of them between the orientation and the resolution. The last segment appearing
as a complication is situated on line 11–15 ending “he came over and tried the shoe on
Cinderella”, after which resolution follows on lines 16–19. In this narrative there is no
identifiable coda.
Example 11 presents the structural elements of narrative in the Cinderella story by
Control 2:
Example 11. Cinderella Story. Control 2
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@G: Cinderella
*CONTR2: there… uh… was uh a dad who had a little girl ABSTRACT
uh and he got married again .um and the …. the stepmother was a wicked stepmother
and she had two uh adult grown daughters of her own and they were really as mean as she was (laughs) ORIENTATION
and there was a decree came out in the kingdom uh that the Prince was going to invite all of the um eligible young ladies to come to the castle uh for a ball
um so the wicked stepmother and her daughters got all dressed up
and they made Cinderella help them get dressed and all that kind o(f) thing COMPLICATION
and then Cinderella knew about this ball too . so she looked at a book to see maybe how she
should dress but she didn't have the proper clothes
but… uh she uh wore some of her stepsisters' clothes
and… and….um and anyway that wasn't appropriate
and when they saw that she was there um they started takin(g) her jewelry away from her and… and tearing her sashes off andthat kind o(f) thing . COMPLICATION
but Cinderella had a fairy godmother . uh so when she realized what was happening
she gave Cinderella um uh with the touch of a wand a beautiful dress
and um she turned uh a pumpkin into uh uh a chariot
and I think she turned mice into the horsemen or the horses(laughs).
and I forget who she turned into the driver COMPLICATION
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but anyway Cinderella arrived at the ball and she was just the talk of the ball and the Prince was so smitten by her that he
immediately asked her to dance uh but the fairy godmother had told Cinderella
that <at the strike of> [//] &mid she had to be out of there at the strike of midnight because then uh she would go back to being Cinderella in her tattered clothes again COMPLICATION
so as she was leaving um she…uh.... and she had glass slippers to go with her
beautiful gown and as she was leaving she was in a really big
hurry to get out of there before they could see her
and she dropped a <crystal shoe or> [//] glass shoe COMPLICATION
and so the…. the Prince's um men (laughs)uh saw that she had dropped the shoe
so he [/] <he was just> [//] he had to find out who [/] who had been there
&uh so <he they had> [//] the [/] the [/] &um the Prince had his people go to all of the single people in the area to see who the shoe fit
so he came to Cinderella's house and the two wicked stepsisters tried <the shoes on and they couldn't even or> [//] the shoe on and they couldn't even get it on COMPLICATION
uh so Cinderella asked to try it on and they made all kinds of fun of her and that kind of thing.
uh but but they said no everybody has to try it on.
so she tried it on and it fit um so she got to go to the castle
RESOLUTION
and she and the Prince lived happily ever after . CODA
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@End993
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Similarly to Control 1, Control 2 narrates the story effortlessly, as expected. Since
Control 2 provides a more detailed portrayal of the events, her narrative is considerably
longer than the one narrated by Control 1. For the future reference, it should be noted
that reported speech, which shall be further discussed later in this chapter and more
thoroughly in Chapter 6, constitutes only a minor part of both of these narratives.
5.2 Narratives produced by aphasic speakers
In this section, I shall first discuss some characteristics of agrammatic narratives, after
which I shall analyse the Cinderella stories by Subject 1 and Subject 2 in instalments
according to the structural elements of narrative according to Labov and Waletzky.
After analysing the aphasic narratives using the structural elements, I shall also analyse
some evaluative devices employed by Subject 1 and Subject 2.
Narratives produced by aphasic speakers are affected by the same three major speech
deficits connected to Broca’s, i.e. nonfluent, aphasia: agrammatism, anomia and
articulation difficulties as well as other characteristics typical of language produced by
aphasic speakers, such as limited vocabulary (see 4.2 Broca’s aphasia). While
agrammatism is often very clearly visible in speech produced by nonfluent aphasics as
omission of grammatical affixes, paucity of verbs and simple syntactical structure in
general, studies on aphasic narratives suggest that aphasia usually leaves the linguistics
means of narrative evaluation, i.e. evaluative devices relatively intact (see e.g.,
Ulatowska et al. 2000, Armstrong & Ulatowska 2007, Olness et al. 2010). Also
structural elements, presented above, are usually rather well preserved in nonfluent
aphasia (Olness & Ulatowska 2011: 1398), although it can be considerably difficult to
identify these structures in the narratives produced by aphasic speakers. Stark (2010:
710) notes that because of the agrammatism and telegraphic speech, it can be
challenging for the listener to detect the content needed in order to follow the story.
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(Re)producing a narrative requires a complex linguistic process. According to Stark
(2010: 710) the narrator must remember the content of the fairy tale and to be aware of
the chronological order of the events in the story. The following challenge is to produce
the fairy tale in the correct sequence of content units in the form of sentences, which
follow grammatical syntax and include semantically satisfactory lexical items and
correct verb tenses.
According to Labov & Waletzky (1967) (see Section 5.1), a narrative can serve either a
referential (i.e. narrative) function or an evaluative function. Armstrong & Ulatowska
(2007: 766) discuss four evaluative devices, which can be used to express evaluation in
a narrative, which include repetition, direct speech, metaphoric language and the use of
particular words and phrases. Direct speech, i.e. reported speech, shall be further
discussed in Chapter 6, while the remaining three evaluative devices shall be briefly
described in the following segments.
Labov (1972: 379) notes that repetition has the evaluative function of intensifying a
particular event in the story, but also suspending the action of the narrative. Since
aphasic speech is typically inflicted by anomia, the difficulty of finding words, it can
often be challenging to define whether the aphasic speaker is using repetition as an
evaluative device or if she/he is exhibiting perseveration (Armstrong and Ulatowska
2007: 766). On the other hand, because aphasic speakers usually have restricted lexical
abilities, repetition may be the easiest evaluative device for them to use (Armstrong &
Ulatowska (2007, 767). Another evaluative device, metaphoric language i.e. iconicity,
refers to figurative terms and expressions bringing two distinct concepts together in an
abstract manner (Armstrong & Ulatowska 2007: 766). For example, a speaker can say
that she/he is on cloud nine, meaning he is feeling extremely happy. Iconicity shall be
further discussed in connection to direct reported speech and enactment in section 6.2.
Finally, particular words and phrases can also be used as evaluative devices. According
to Armstrong & Ulatowska (2007: 766), evaluation is most often expressed by using
adjectives (e.g. horrible, scary), but it can also involve verbs (e.g. love, hate), nouns
(e.g. bastard, devil), and adverbs, (e.g. happily, gently), or phrases which are often used
as intensifiers (e.g. very happy, remarkably beautiful).
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Labov (1972: 370) notes that evaluative devices are often employed to signal the
recipient why the story is being told, i.e. why the events occurring in the narrative are
reportable. However, in the case of our data, the notion of a reportable event does not
apply, since the narratives produced by aphasic speakers analysed in this thesis are
fairytales produced by request in an artificial context, rather than personal narratives
told as a part of everyday conversation. Thus, the analysis conducted for this thesis shall
not include the function of evaluative devices used to signify why the story is told, even
though this kind of elements may also occur in the stories produced by Subjects 1 and 2.
Evaluative devices serve transmission of significance, which is often contrasted with
transmission of information i.e. making reference (Olness et al. 2010: 698). According
to Olness et al. (2010), individuals with aphasia appear to have mostly preserved the
ability to apply evaluative devices in their narratives. This was found by analysing 33
demographically matched speakers of English of which 17 had aphasia and 16 had no
neurological speech deficit. Olness et al. found that the groups, individuals with and
without aphasia, used narrative evaluative devices as frequently and their co-occurrence
and distribution in the narrative structure were similar.
While aphasic speakers are usually able to successfully employ evaluative devices, their
narratives often perform the referential i.e. narrative function less efficiently because of
the anomic and agrammatic features in their speech (Olness & Ulatowska 2011:1398).
As stated in Chapter 4, anomia often causes aphasic speakers to find it difficult to
retrieve the name of an object (Pratt & Whitaker 2006: 322), which leads to paucity of
full nominal phrases in their speech reducing the overall semantic clarity of the
narrative (Olness and Ulatowska 2011: 1398) (see section 4.2 for more information on
anomia). According to Olness & Ulatowska (2011: 1398), agrammatism also
complicates the narrative function in stories produced by aphasic speakers, since it
impairs the production of verbs and especially verbs of action, which have a crucial role
in performing the narrative function.
In studies involving narratives produced by aphasic speakers, the analysed narratives are
most often so called stroke narratives i.e. stories about the stroke or some other
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dramatic episode causing their speech impairment, such as the narrative sample
portrayed here (Ulatowska et al. 2011: 105).
Um. . .I um. . .got up. . .um..from my nap. And I dressed, and um. . .you know. . .um. . .I felt funny. But you know, tired and everything. “We’re gonna do it!” And. . .um. . .the. . .um. ..um.. the interim manager was talking to me and um she said something and I said, “I, I’ll stroke you know?” “Get out of here, okay?” And I early morning, one thirty twoo’clock, um. . .I feel funny and I said, “well, what’s the matter. What, I’ve fallen.” AndI tried to “help help” but it doesn’t come out. And “help, help,” but my mouth doesn’t move. And I’m tried to get up. “No, what’s the matter, what’s wrong with me. I don’t speak. But why? Why me?” I tried to get up again, no. I I’m stuck, floppin’ on the floor. I “help, help,” but no words come. “Help me please somebody help me.” But I don’tcome, the words don’t come. “Jesus, come on stop it okay.” Finally, I starting to get worried. But nothing’s, not coming. Floppin’ away. Um. . .finally a resident is coming in the door and he says, “what’s the matter, what’s the matter?” Well, I don’t speak. “Help me, help me.” I don’t speak. I, I am rushed to Memoril, only to Memorial. Um. . .um..six o’clock. Tests won’t though. Um I thought I was getting better, but no speak.
“Help me, help me”. . .no, no I don’t have words. Noon, “help me please.” I don’t see, I don’t mmmm no sounds. Five o’clock, um. . .my little brother and um. . .Pat, my lifelong friends, okay. And, “it’s okay, we’ll, we’ll get out of your way” and um “Take me home please.” The the um. . .um. . .Peter and Pat and I were talking okay, “I’m okay, I’mgoing to smoke a little bit and I’m getting out.” No. Test were constant. . .um. . .lots of tests. Um we sped over Arlington Memorial, St. Paul’s. Um. . .hole in the heart. Okay, “it’ll be okay.” My little brother’s talking to me and everything. . .Um..I’m crying. Peter says, :it’s okay, ta-take it step by step, okay?”
In addition to anomia and agrammatism described in Chapter 4, the narrative sample
above features some elements that are especially typical for a narrative produced by an
agrammatic speaker, such as the use of direct reported speech and temporal iconicity,
which shall be further discussed later in this thesis.
Next, I shall try to analyse the narrative produced by Subject 1 according to structural
elements of narrative by Labov and Waletzky (1967). In addition to identifying the
structural elements, I shall try to paraphrase the key elements of the story in order to
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make it more comprehensible for the reader. After the structural analysis, I shall discuss
some of the evaluative devices employed by Subjects 1 and 2.
The first line of the extract, presented in Example 12, could be considered the abstract:
Example 12. Subject 1.
1 @G: Cinderella Story2 SUBJ1: um… there were--- there was… um the ^little girl in it.
On line 2 Subject 1 is telling very briefly what the story is about, thus producing an
utterance that could be considered a minimal abstract, even though she does not exactly
summarise the plot of the story.
It is challenging to interpret the following lines after the abstract, but it could be argued
that there are at least three complications before the resolution, the first one appearing
on lines 3–15:
Example 13. Subject 1.
3 and there was…. and they [kei] ( = say):4 oh my ^what a-- what a Jesus. 5 and they said,6 <HI> oh my god </HI> watch… Jesus.7 and say-- um… and said,8 …come come come (taps the table with fingers: imitates walking) 9 he says… and they said,10 <VOX> Th… uh… we don’t like you.11 We don’t likes you. </VOX>12 And she's goin(g),13 <HI> well hey </HI> what…um what… um we…um we, 14 we, we, we don't, we don't like us and we're going to15 tell us .
Lines 3–15 present something that could be interpreted as heated discussion between
several persons. These lines contain hardly any nominal phrases or referentials, which
makes it very difficult to understand what Subject 1 is trying to say. In fact, without
knowing the context it would be impossible to tell what is actually happening here, but
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in regards to the Cinderella story, it could be supposed that Subject 1 is perhaps trying
to narrate the onset of the events in the story: firstly, Cinderella living with her mean
stepmother and two stepsisters (orientation), and secondly them planning to go to a ball
which Cinderella is not allowed to or is not able to go (complication). In other words,
on lines 3–14 Subject 1 is perhaps trying to produce some features of orientation
describing the time, place, the persons present, their activities or the situation, in
addition to first complication. To compare these lines to corresponding lines in a more
intelligible narrative, such as the one produced by Control 2, it can be argued that these
lines are supposed to hold the same elements that Control 2 produces on lines 4–8
(Example 11 above).
The second complication can be found on lines 15–23:
Example 14. Subject 1.
15 so this little old lady,16 and she says , 17 oh ^come with me.18 and she has a beautiful dress you know everything19 and so Cinderella said, 20 ^oh my `God !21 ^oh my `God !22 xxx (uncomprehensible)23 and she … th, oh, she went with this `beautiful [bres]
(=dress)
The turn of the events here is most probably the emergence of her Fairy Godmother,
who magically turns her old rags into a most amazing ball gown. In this instalment, it
becomes apparent that Subject 1 often uses direct reported speech with an element
signalling that the clause has restrictions in the temporal order, such as and on line 16
(..and she says, oh come with me), instead of producing full narrative clauses. Since the
clause begins with an and, it can be interpreted as a coordinate clause. As mentioned
above, according to Labov & Waletzky (1967: 23), a narrative clause has a fixed
temporal juncture and free clause can be placed anywhere in the narrative sequence,
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while a coordinate clause can be interchanged but not placed as freely as free clauses
without changing temporal sequence.
Reported speech shall be further discussed in Chapter 6. In this instalment we can also
see some full nominal phrases (this little old lady, this beautiful dress, Cinderella),
which makes this instalment considerably more comprehensible than the previous one.
The third complication appears on lines 24–35:
Example 15. Subject 1.
24 and she said 25 <L> oh `let's do the ^gates </L>26 and she [læ:ns] ( = dance) and (imitating dance with her hand)27 and they- they look <A> and he said </A>28 `oh my god !29 and they- <A> they don’t s#30 and they said </A>31 “oh my god !” (?) 32 they- um the <HI> ^thing </HI>33 he said,34 <CRY> oh my god</CRY>35 <A> she said, 36 oh. </A>
In this instalment, it is rather difficult to interpret the meaning of line 25, oh let’s do the
gates. However, in connection to the next line, 26, and she danced and…, it could be
suggested that the gates refer to some kind of a traditional ballroom dance where
dancers form gates for the others to go through. On line 27, it can be presumed that they
refers to Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters, who are appalled to see Cinderella
dancing in her beautiful ball gown, resulting in two exclamations of oh my god,
probably signalling some kind of affect or evaluation, which shall also be further
discussed in Chapter 6. On line 27 he is mentioned, most probably referring to the
Prince, who appears to be impressed with Cinderella, concluding from the fact that he
also says oh my god on line 28. It is difficult to interpret what Subject 2 is trying to say
on lines 33–36. However, concluding on the events taking place before and after lines
33–36, we can presume that what is described here take place sometime after Cinderella
enters the ballroom and before the Prince begins to look for the owner of the glass
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slipper. Thus, the utterance produced with a crying sound quality, oh my god on line 34
might express the Prince’s feelings at the moment he realises that Cinderella has left the
ball in a hurry and he does not know her name or where to find her. The dialogue
occurring on lines 33–36 shall be further discussed in Chapter 6.
She on line 35 might refer to Cinderella, although naturally it is also possible that the
person who is speaking is Cinderella’s stepmother or one of the stepsisters. The
meaning of she said, oh (line 35) remains unclear. On the video it can be heard that
Subject 1uses falling intonation on line 35, and thus it can be concluded that she is
making a statement rather than exclaiming something in awe, amazement or horror.
Also in this instalment, Subject 1 uses reported speech, i.e. she narrates the events by
reporting the words or thoughts of the characters using a reporting clause (e.g. he said,
she said) on several occasions (see Chapter 6).
The resolution of the narrative follows the third complication on lines 37–44:
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Example 16. Subject 1.
37 and then uh uh the [pə:s] it said- it said (drawing on the table with finger)
38 <L> “a little `bit” </L>39 um um … she said `big--40 her… mo-, her mother, her mother, hers (hand on chest) 41 and there was little [piŋ] ^not the little (continues drawing on
the table with finger)42 and she said43 “^oh my `god”44 <HI> “here” </HI>
Concluding from the key words produced by Subject 1 and knowing how the Cinderella
story ends, it could be presumed that in this instalment, the Prince is looking for the
owner of the lost glass slipper and wondering around the region asking young ladies to
try it on. When he comes to Cinderella’s house, her stepsisters try it on, but the shoe
does not fit either of them, since it is either too big or too small (line 39 big and 41
little). What is presumably happening on lines 42–43 is that Cinderella is finally asked
to try on the slipper, and when it fits, the Prince realises that she is his beloved one (line
44).
The final element, coda, can be found on line 45:
Example 17. Subject 1.
45 and they’re [mæf hæfipli] ever after.
On line 45 Subject 1 produces almost fluently a very typical coda for a fairy tale: and
they were married happily ever after. Since the resolution would end the narrative in the
past tense, coda is used to return its perspective to the present moment (Labov &
Waletzky 1967: 39).
Next, I shall identify the structural elements in the Cinderella story by Subject 2 while
simultaneously paraphrasing the narrative.
Subject 2 begins his narrative with a few lines which could be considered orientation:
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Example 18. Subject 2.
1 @G: Cinderella 2 Subj2: Cinderella . 3 uh… (sweeps the table with his hand, rubs his chin) 4 Cin- Cinderella uh… a- all alone all alone .
According to Labov and Waletzky (1967: 32), orientation most often consists of free
clauses which occur together in the beginning of the narrative. In the case of the
Cinderella story by Subject 2, it is challenging to say for sure where the orientation ends
and the first complication begins, because he produces rather few narrative clauses and
produces utterances resembling free clauses or coordinate clauses instead. Perhaps
orientation actually continues to line 8 or 9, depending on whether Subject 2 is trying to
say that the two girls, presumably Cinderella’s stepsisters, are mad in the sense of mean,
or if they become mad because Cinderella sees the invitation and wants to go to the ball
as well.
As mentioned, it is not quite clear where the first complication begins, but it is
nevertheless presented somewhere on lines 5–13:
Example 19. Subject 2.
5 um…two ^girls, (shows two fingers)6 um… um, (shows three fingers)7 the the the ^three girls,8 two girls are… ^mad (shows two fingers)9 Uh…Sss…Cillin- Cinderella um the the the ^letter,10 demanded in a ^letter 11 two…uh…maybe one… [b] [k] boy 12 and then maybe… 13 uh the uh the [s] this the other on `top of the ^hill,
The first complication, or turn in the narrative, by Subject 2, is the arrival of the
invitation (letter) to the Prince’s ball, which is to take place in his castle, presumably
situated on top of the hill. In this instalment, Subject 2 does not produce full narrative
clauses, i.e. there are no finite verbs in them, and it is difficult to say whether he is
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trying to produce any. The conjunction and makes the utterance on lines 12–13 appear
as an attempted coordinate clause, which is perhaps closest thing to a narrative clause in
this instalment. As mentioned above, according to Labov & Waletzky (1967: 23), two
coordinate clauses can be interchanged without changing temporal sequence.
Unfortunately, in the case of the utterance on lines 12–13, there are no other coordinated
clauses in close proximity, and thus we cannot test whether they are interchangeable.
However, since the utterance in question has a more fixed relation to temporal sequence
than a free clause because of the conjunction and and the adverb then, but not as fixed
as a narrative clause would have, it can be concluded that this may be a case of
attempted coordinate clause. It should also be noted that semantically, while most of the
clauses in this instalment appear similar to free clauses, they cannot be placed anywhere
in the story without changing the course of the events, which would be the case with
true free clauses, and thus it can be concluded that Subject 2 narrates the events in a
precise order even though there are no full narrative clauses.
The second complication appears on lines 14–17:
Example 20. Subject 2.
14 there's um… no good dress, tearing apart. 15 [t] [t] two girls ^ripped, (shows two fingers)
16 ^ripped the dress 17 and… uh… all then all alone,
In this instalment, the complication appears to be that Cinderella’s stepsisters rip her
dress into pieces and thus, she has not an appropriate dress to wear for the Prince’s ball.
On lines 15 and 16 Subject 2 uses the past form of the verb rip, making it slightly more
tied to the temporal sequence of the narrative.
On lines 18–28, Subject 2 narrates the third complication:
Example 21. Subject 2.
18 um then two girls (shows one finger)19 one ^girl and [s] `magic ^wand,20 uh and and then new ski- ^skirt,21 um new ^skirt.
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22 uh and then [n] uh [tʃɑ:dʒ] one two three four (gestures around)
23 uh the ^horse, … four ´four ^horses, (shows four fingers)24 and the… ^carriage and the um… the the ^dress,25 um ^new skirt and the ^birds uh,26 maybe um…. `thank ^you (laughs) 27 the the the the [sɛlərɛlə] (= Cinderella)28 `thank ^you,
It can be interpreted that on line 19 Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother appears and conjures
up a dress for Cinderella as well as a carriage drawn by four horses. Subject 2 is
probably trying to narrate Cinderella’s gratitude towards her Fairy Godmother on lines
26–28 in the form of reported speech.
It should also be noted that throughout his narrative, but especially in the instalment
shown in Example 21, Subject 2 displays characteristics of what is known as the
pragmatic mode of communication. According to Givón (1979, as cited by Wilkinson
2010: 80), the properties of pragmatic mode of communication include the topic-
comment structure, paucity of subordination and hardly any grammatical morphology,
which can all be found in this instalment. The topic-comment structure, where the
narrator first introduces the topic and then produces another element, in this case an
utterance of reported speech, is often used by aphasic speakers (see e.g. Wilkinson et al.
2003, 2010) and shall be further discussed in Chapter 6. The other two criteria of the
pragmatic mode of communication are also fulfilled, since none of the utterances in this
instalment includes subordination and there is very little grammatical morphology, e.g.
grammatical affixes, to be found in them. Instead, Subject 2 appears to produce a list of
objects relying on the pragmatical relations between them (Wilkinson 2010: 66), i.e. the
recipient must know or be able to conclude how the items are connected in order to
understand what the narrator is trying to say.
The fourth complication can be found on lines 29–38:
Example 22. Subject 2.
29 and then they're [o] on ^top of the `hill, 30 the ^coach and the… uh the ^skirt and the… ma-31 `two `girls ^mad (shows two fingers)
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32 uh…^Cinderella and the… the `other ^man uh is…33 uh maybe--34 ^Cinderella and the gir- ^boy is uh …[s]uh [si] `swinging
(swirling his hand)
35 or [s] [s] [s] uh [the] someth(ing) like that,36 uh… [s] `dancing 37 and then um ^midnight.38 ^oh `boy !
The fourth complication begins with Cinderella arriving to the castle in her carriage.
One can conclude that Cinderella and the Prince start dancing together, which makes the
stepsisters mad. Then the clock strikes 12, at which point Subject 2 excitedly exclaims
oh boy on line 38, as if to accentuate the significance of the event. There are few finite
verbs in this instalment, apart from (they)’re on line 29, is on line 32 and again on line
34. However, Subject 2 produces more full nominal phrases (the coach, the skirt, the
other man) in this instalment than in the previous ones, making it easier to follow.
The fifth complication describing Cinderella’s exit from the ball appears on lines 39–45.
Example 23. Subject 2.
39 ^Cinderella,40 hey, I `gotta go.41 so [don] [dau] down down down, (gestures downwards)
42 and the… the ^foot (=shoe?) uh, 43 the… uh `Cinderella one more ^[miʃən] (=minute?)? 44 [p] but I don't `care, 45 `[sIlədərɛlə] (=Cinderella) in the ^horse four ^horses on
(gestures going)
The instalment begins with Subject 2 using reported speech to describe the progress of
the narrative: Cinderella (says), hey, I gotta go on lines 39–40. It appears that Subject 2
is using direct reported speech (without the reporting clause) instead of one or more
narrative clauses, as did Subject 1 in her narrative. The Prince begs her to stay for a
moment (mission on line 43 meaning perhaps a minute) but she ignores him and and
leaves the ball. Subject 2 gestures to describe movement in two occassions in this
instalment: Cinderella going down the stairs on line 41, and her leaving in her carriage
on line 45. Using gestures as a compensatory resource employed by aphasic speakers
shall be discussed in connection to enactments in Chapter 6.
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The resolution of the story including some evaluation takes place on lines 46–54:
Example 24. Subject 2.
46 uh now [th] the `boy and and the…uh `Cinderella47 uh the ^man, uh the foot (=shoe?) (points foot)48 um then maybe `two ^girls…uh… [m] may no ^good, 49 uh one… two `girls um ^mad. (shows two fingers)50 ^foot ^foot no `good (points foot)51 then the `other [s] [f] ^Cinderella…aw… [ei], 52 um `Cinderella, `Cinderella, [mai] [ai] the girl the foot 53 `Cinderella take uh the [th] `thank ^god.54 uh and then the `man and the `woman is ^married.
In this instalment the Prince or his servant comes to Cinderella’s house in order to ask
each of the young women to try on the glass slipper that the mysterious woman dropped
when leaving the ball. Obviously this has to be preceded by Cinderella losing her shoe
on the night of the ball, although Subject 2 does not mention this in his narrative. The
stepsisters try on the glass slipper, but it is not their size, which makes the stepsisters
mad (lines 58–60). Finally Cinderella is asked to try on the shoe (lines 60–61), and it
appears to fit, although this is not stated specifically. The positive outcome of
Cinderella trying on the shoe becomes evident on line 63 with Subject 2 producing an
evaluative utterance thank god. The story reaches its resolution on line 64, as Subject 2
narrates the Prince and Cinderella getting married.
Similarly to Subject 1, Subject 2 also produces very few full narrative clauses.
However, he uses structures resembling free clauses and coordinate clauses as a manner
similar to narrative clauses, i.e. they have a fixed temporal order, since they cannot be
placed randomly in the story without changing the course of the events. To achieve this,
Subject 2 also uses the conjunction and and the adverb then, which anchor the events to
a certain order on the timeline. Example 24 also features temporal iconicity, i.e., Subject
2 articulates the utterances presenting events in the same order as they would take place
in the story, which, according to Wilkinson et al. (2010:70) , is often employed by
agrammatic speakers. While narrating the events in the chronological order may appear
to be the only logical way to narrate a story, it should be noted that so called normal
adult speakers often use constructions such as “before X happened, Y happened”
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(Wilkinson et al. 2010: 70). For example, someone might narrate the events taking place
in Example 24 by saying that Before Cinderella got the chance to try on the shoe, both
of her mean stepsisters had already tried it on. Because these kind of grammatical
structures are often too complex for agrammatic speakers, they employ other devices to
depict the relationship between events (Wilkinson 2010: 70). Example 34 presents
Subject 2 narrating the story using temporal iconicity, which he employs, in fact,
throughout the story. Subject 1 also relies on temporal iconicity in her narrative, which
is definitely the main factor making her narrative relatively comprehensible.
As seen above, narratives do not necessarily include a part that could be identified as the
evaluation. Instead, the evaluation appears to occur embedded in the other structural
elements in the form of evaluative devices. For the final topic featured in the analysis
conducted for this section, I shall discuss three of the evaluative devices discussed by
Armstrong & Ulatowska (2007: 766–767), repetition, metaphoric language and the use
of particular words and phrases employed by Subjects 1 and 2 in their narratives. As
mentioned above, one of the evaluative devices, direct speech i.e. reported speech, shall
be discussed in Chapter 6.
Firstly, I shall analyse the cases of repetition found in the narratives. Examples 25 (seen
before in Example 13) and 26 (seen before in Example 18) present Subject 1 and
Subject employing repetition:
Example 25. Subject 1.
5 and they said,6 <HI> oh my god </HI> watch… Jesus.7 and say-- um… and said,8 …come come come (taps the table with fingers: imitates walking)
Example 26. Subject 2
4 Cin- Cinderella uh… a- all alone all alone .
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Example 27. Subject 2.
15 [t] [t] two girls ^ripped, (shows two fingers)
16 ^ripped the dress
As noted above, it is rather difficult to state exactly what is happening in the part of the
narrative by Subject 1 presented in Example 25. It can be interpreted that they refers to
Cinderella’s stepsisters and her stepmother, presumably ordering Cinderella to do
something. However, the repetition occurring within the direct reported speech on line
8, come come come, can be interpreted as an intensifier (Labov 1972: 379). By using
repetition, Subject 1 is able to avoid having to produce an utterance or many utterances,
which could potentially require producing complex structures, in order to convey the
presumed commanding tone of quoted words. Subject 2 also uses repetition as an
intensifier in Examples 26 and 27. In Example 26, he repeats the phrase all alone.
While the meaning of phrase itself describes total solitude, Subject 2 repeating the
phrase makes Cinderella’s life in the setting of the story sound even more miserable. In
Example 27, while intensifying the word ripped, Subject 2 is simultaneously suspending
the action (Labov 1972: 379), making the event of the dress being ripped appear even
more significant.
Next, I shall discuss the case of metaphoric language found in the narrative by Subject
1.
Example 28. Subject 1.
24 and she said 25 <L> oh `let's do the ^gates </L>26 and she [læ:ns] ( = dance) and (imitating dance with her hand)
As mentioned above, the gates may refer to some kind of a traditional dance where
dancers put their hands together forming gates for the other dancers to go through.
Hence, the gates could be interpreted as a metaphoric expression. However, whether
Subject 1 actually uses metaphoric language in this instalment remains uncertain,
because the emotion conveyed on line 25, where the gates appears, can either be
interpreted to express the feelings of the narrator or Cinderella, the reported speaker.
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Subject 1 produces the quoted words on line 25 using slow speech, as if to accentuate
her words and to emphasize the importance of this part of the story. However, if she is
expressing the emotions of the reported speaker, Cinderella, the meaning of the words
must be something different, e.g. expressing Cinderella’s happiness or determination at
the moment when she has finally made her way to the Prince’s ball and will be able to
dance and have fun just like any other guest.
Mason (1993: 38) cites Wierzbicka (1974: 272), according to whom the narrator
reporting another’s words by quoting them assumes the role of that person for a moment
and “plays his part”. Thus, Mason claims that Labov’s subjects, the narrators of the
examples he presents in his theory, are imagining themselves back to the situation they
are narrating, and thus “play themselves”. Accordingly, it can be claimed that in the
utterance of reported speech presented in Example 28, Subject 1 is temporarily
assuming the role of Cinderella and thus, the feelings conveyed in her words are
Cinderella’s.
According to Labov (1972) and Martin (2003), as cited by Armstrong and Ulatowska
(2007: 766), certain words and phrases can also be used as evaluative devices. In the
narratives produced by Subjects 1 and 2 these kinds of words most often occur in direct
reported speech, and thus, they shall be further discussed in Chapter 6. Some evaluative
words and phrases produced outside direct reported speech by Subject 2 are presented in
Example 29:
Example 29. Subject 2.
4 Cin- Cinderella uh… a- all alone all alone .--8 two girls are… ^mad (shows two fingers)
On line 4, Subject 2 uses the phrase all alone repeatedly, as discussed above. However,
in addition to being the object of repetition, it can be claimed that the phrase is
evaluative on its own. Subject 2 produces the phrase in the very beginning of his
narrative, which makes it appear as description of the setting for the story, or to use
Labov’s terms, orientation. It can be claimed that by using this evaluative phrase,
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Subject 2 is able to describe Cinderella’s lonely situation in a very economical manner.
Of course, loneliness was not the only factor making Cinderella miserable in the story,
but all alone all alone conveys the general feeling of desperation to the recipient.
On line 8, Subject 2 returns to describing the setting by stating that Cinderella’s
stepsisters are mad. Subject 2 accentuates the word mad, consequently intensifying its
effect. In the story, Cinderella’s stepsisters have traditionally been described as mean
rather than mad. However, it remains uncertain whether Subject 2 is actually trying to
produce the adjective mean, or if he thinks that the stepsisters are actually mad as in
insane. This early in the story it appears unlikely that the stepsisters would be mad in
the meaning of angry.
While the evaluative devices presented by Armstrong & Ulatowska (2007: 766) do not
include exclamations, I would like to include one in this part of the analysis, presented
in Example 30 (other evaluative exclamations produced by Subject 1 and Subject 2
occur in direct reported speech and shall be discussed in Chapter 6.).
Example 30. Subject 2.
38 ^oh `boy !
On line 38, Subject 2 exclaims Oh boy, which can either be interpreted as an expression
of excitement preceding one of the most important turning points of the story, or as
exhaustion on the verge of having to produce all the potentially arduous utterances
expected from him in order to finish the story. The quality of Subject 2’s sound does not
give any clues of his feelings in this part of the story, so it remains uncertain whether oh
boy expresses excitement or anxiousness.
It should be noted that Labov (1972) discusses mainly narratives describing personal
experiences, while the narratives analysed for this thesis are fairy tales and can thus be
regarded as stories depicting vicarious experiences. It can be claimed that the events
taking place in personal narratives probably evoke much stronger emotions than the
events of a fairy tale. Thus, because the manifestations of emotion are most likely less
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dramatic in vicarious narratives, the evaluative devices in the narratives by Subject 1
and Subject 2 are likely to be more difficult to identify.
To summarise this chapter, I would like to note that it is rather difficult to find Labov’s
elements of narrative structure in the narratives produced by Subject 1 and Subject 2
because it is often hard to tell what kind of a structure or clause, e.g. narrative clauses
indicating complication or free clauses referring to orientation, they are trying to
produce. Nevertheless, knowing the plot of the story, it can often be concluded what the
subject is trying to say in each section, which makes it also possible to find Labov’s
elements in the narrative. Subject 1 produced an abstract, three complications featuring
some elements of orientation, resolution and a coda. While evaluation as a segment of
its own could not be identified, Subject 1 produced many affective exclamations, which
could be interpreted as evaluative, throughout the story. Subject 2 produced an
orientation, four complications, and a resolution. In the case of Subject 2, evaluation
was mainly implemented into the resolution segment. In addition, both Subject 1 and
Subject 2 also used embedded evaluative devices such as repetition and metaphorical
speech in their narratives.
The narratives produced by Subject 1 and Subject 2 feature all the elements of
agrammatism described in Chapter 4, such as the omission of verbs and grammatical
affixes. Also the lack of full nominal phrases in both narratives makes it difficult to
follow the narrative at times. (However it should be noted that both Subject 1 and 2
appear to be producing more nominal phrases as the story progresses.) Especially in the
case of Subject 1, references to characters consist mostly of pronouns such as he, she or
they, which the recipient has to interpret using contextual clues.
Both of the agrammatic narratives bear many features presented in the earlier studies
concerning aphasic narratives (see e.g. Ulatowska et al. 2011, Olness et al. 2010), such
as the unimpaired evaluative devices employing enactment, such as direct reported
speech, gestures, body movement and prosody. What is especially noticeable in
narratives by Subjects 1 and 2, is the pragmatic mode they use while narrating the story,
which manifests itself as a lack of syntactic structures. Instead, agrammatic speakers
depict the relations between objects by using topic-comment structures and temporal
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iconicity, i.e. ordering the elements in a manner which displays something of the
meaning or relationship between two or more elements (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 70).
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6. Reported Speech
In stories, as well as in everyday conversation, a large proportion of the semantic
content is often presented in the form of dialogue reporting what was said (Downing &
Locke 2006: 300). Speech produced by other speakers, or by the speaker himself, as
well as thinking processes, can be portrayed using direct reported speech, i.e. quoting
the original speaker word for word, or indirect reported speech (Downing & Locke
2006: 299).
In addition to reporting actual utterances, also hypothetical utterances possibly taking
place in the future, emotional reactions or thoughts can be expressed in the form of
reported speech which is why many researchers prefer to use a broader term, such as re-
envoicing utterances, reporting discourse, or constructed dialogue (Hengst et al. 2005:
138). Hengst et al. (2005: 138) note that according an interactional sociolinguistic
approach to reported speech, language is shaped by and also contributing to the social
surroundings of its use by actively contextualising talk, which is often done so
automatically that neither speakers nor listeners even notice it. They also claim that this
is why reported speech has a special role in the process of contextualization: it makes
the pragmatic and metapragmatic process more visible.
6.1 Direct and indirect reported speech
According to Hengst (2005: 138–139), both direct and indirect forms of reported speech
are usually linguistically framed with reporting clause. Indirect reported speech is used
to report the content of someone’s statements, questions and directives (Downing &
Locke 2006: 299).
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In indirect reported speech the verb tense follows the current context where the
utterance of speech is being reported (e.g. The Prince told her that he wanted to marry
her.), i.e. the past tense is most often used, while in the case of direct reported speech,
the verb tense imitates the context in which the utterance was originally produced (e.g.
present tense in ‘I want to marry you,’ said the Prince), (Ulatowska et al. 2011: 94).
Indirect reported speech is also presented in Examples 31–33 by Control 2:
Example 31. Control 2.
40 and the Prince was so smitten by her that he41 immediately asked her to dance
Example 32. Control 2.
42 uh but the fairy godmother had told Cinderella43 that at the strike of mid she had to be44 out of there at the strike of midnight because45 then uh she would go back to being Cinderella46 in her tattered clothes again
Example 33. Control 2.
66 uh so Cinderella asked to try it on and they…
As expected, Control 2 successfully produces the correct past tense in each case of
reported speech.
Similarly to reporting indirect speech, reporting direct speech usually involves a
peripheral clause introducing someone’s direct speech or thoughts, i.e. a reporting
clause, which often consists of a one-word subject and a one-word verb phrase of
saying or thinking, (Biber et al. 2002: 460, 258; Downing & Locke 2006: 299). As seen
in Example 34, a reporting clause can be used to express who is speaking (a), who is
being spoken to (b), the manner of speech (c) as well as the manner of utterance (d)
(Biber et al. 2002: 258).
Example 34.
a. ‘ I want to go home,’ Michael said.
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b. ‘Just be patient,’ Mum answered to him.
c. ‘But I’m bored,’ cried Michael.
d. ‘Surely you will survive another five minutes,’ Mum said to him in a strict
manner .
In Example 34, each reporting clause occurs after the quoted speech, but it is also
possible to arrange them differently by placing the reporting clause before the quoted
speech, e.g. Prince said, “I want to marry that girl”, or in the middle of the reported
utterance, e.g. “Yes”, said Prince, “I want to marry that girl” (Biber et al. 2002: 258).
Control 2 also uses direct reported speech in one occasion, presented in Example 35, as
does Control 1, as shown in Example 36:
Example 35. Control 2.
29 uh but but they said no everybody has to try it on .
Example 36. Control 1.
10 and up-- suddenly a Prince rode up and said 11 I'm looking for this person who's supposed to 12 be my Princess
13 I know it's her if her foot fits in the shoe
Direct reported speech often involves paralinguistic features such as gestures, imitating
the speaker’s voice or his style of speech (Hengst et al. 2005).
Reported speech, similarly to narrative itself (Labov & Waletzky, 1967), can perform a
narrative function or an evaluative function, which has been studied among aphasic
speakers as well, e.g., in the study by Ulatowska et al. (2011) analysing illness
narratives of 33 individuals with nonfluent aphasia. According to them, reported speech
serves a narrative function when it is used to signify the temporal and causative
progression of the narrative, and when it contributes to making the narrative structure
more storylike by enhancing the temporal flow of events and coherence of the narrative
as a text. The two clauses of direct reported speech presented in Example 36 by Control
1, the only items of reported speech in his narrative, appear to have a strongly narrative
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function portraying one of the most crucial events of the story, the Prince announcing he
is on a mission to find his beloved one by having young women in the surrounding
regions to try out the shoe she left behind.
Performing an evaluative function, reported speech is used to determine the nature of a
situation and provide emotional aspects to the context, to pray or to talk to oneself in
order to add a more personal touch to the story (Ulatowska et al. 2011: 100). In addition
to a narrative function and an evaluative function, many scholars also recognise other
functions for using reported speech. Sociolinguists are especially interested in the
communicative functions: interactional, referential, discourse and social functions
(Hengst et al 2005: 139). According to Hengst et al, interactional functions draw
attention to participant frameworks contributing to the identification of participant roles,
i.e. ratified speakers, listeners and bystanders, which in turn serves to structure
interaction. They also claim that reported speech broadens the participation frameworks
by drawing attention to speakers beyond the copresent participants. Thus, speakers
actively construct or reconstruct reported speech by emphasizing different aspect of the
reported speech and context, instead of just repeating what has been said (Hengst et al.
2005: 139).
Hengst et al. (2005:139) note that according to a theory by Clark and Gerrik, reported
speech has three fundamental referential functions in conversations: describing,
demonstrating and indicating. Describing is most often the function of indirect reported
speech, while direct reports of speech are often accomplished by demonstrating.
According to Hengst et al., referential functions of reported speech do not only include
the manner a reference is made, but also about what is being referenced.
6.2 Reported speech produced by aphasic speakers
It has been suggested in many studies that aphasic speakers are usually able to produce
direct reported speech fluently (see e.g. Hengst et al. 2005, Ulatowska et al., 2011,
Wilkinson et al. 2010), and many of them employ it in regular basis to enhance their
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communication (Ulatowska & Olness 2003; Schegloff 2000). According to Hengst et al.
(2005) at least some of their subjects with nonfluent aphasia use direct reported speech
as a communicative resource, which makes them appear as successful communicators
despite the limitations caused by aphasia.
Some aphasic speakers who possess fairly intact syntactic and semantic abilities have
difficulties in social interaction in their everyday lives, while some patients with very
severe language deficits are surprisingly able to communicate many things by using the
social and cognitive resources around them and within the verbal content produced by
their interlocutors (Goodwin 2003). Considering the linguistic and paralinguistic means,
it has been found that speakers with aphasia often employ various resources to
communicate more efficiently, such as prosody (see e.g. Goodwin C. & M. H. Goodwin
2002, Goodwin C. 2002), repetition (Ulatowska et al. 2000), gestures and body
movement (Wilkinson et al. 2010), co-constructing talk with communication partners
(Bloch & Beeke 2008) and using other’s words, i.e. reported speech (Holt 1996, 2000,
Hengst 2005).
According to Wilkinson et al. (2010: 58), in order to depict some aspects of a reported
event, many agrammatic speakers employ enactment (term originally introduced by M.
H. Goodwin 1990 and Streeck & Knapp 1992), which includes direct reported speech,
gestures, body movement and prosody resulting in iconic language forms, which have
already been briefly defined in connection to metaphoric language (section 5.2). For the
purpose of this thesis, we can determine iconicity roughly as a resemblance between
two objects (Merrel 2006: 475), i.e., there is some kind of a similarity between form and
meaning (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 60). Metaphoric language is a typical example of
linguistic iconicity, while, according to Wilkinson et al. (2010: 60), examples of
paralinguistic iconicity include the correlation between the loudness of voice and
increased aggravation, and onomatopoeia. Onomatopoetic sounds are used to signal
behaviour or feelings traditionally linked to the animate or inanimate source producing
the sound, e.g. grrr would imply that the person making the noise is feeling angry as a
bear or some other beast. Iconicity is also an important aspect of the direct reported
speech. The iconicity of direct reported speech enables agrammatic speakers, as well as
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so called normal speakers, to express themselves by demonstrating some features of a
particular scene and makes it possible for them to experience certain aspects of the
event as if they perceived it in person: hear the exact words the reported speaker
presumably used, hear how the person sounded, and/or hear the way the speaker acted
while producing the words (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 60). However, it should be noted that
reported speech does not constitute a replica of the utterance that is being reported. Holt
(2000: 426) notes that reported speech can be used to communicate affect, e.g. by
prosodic means.
Many agrammatic speakers rarely display use of indirect reported speech, perhaps
because producing subordinate constructions is a challenging task for a speaker with
limited linguistic resources (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 58), and fall back on direct reported
speech instead (see e.g. Lind 2002). Using direct reported speech is also an economical
practice of communication for an aphasic speaker, since by presenting the paralinguistic
features of the reported utterance while simultaneously producing the direct reported
speech, the speaker is able to avoid having to produce many, potentially arduous,
descriptive sentences (Holt 1996: 234).
Another amiable feature of direct reported speech for an agrammatic speaker is its
relatively loose syntactic relation to the surrounding context. According to Wilkinson et
al. (2010: 61), direct reported speech can perform similarly to main clause, since, unlike
indirect reported speech, it can consist of a question or command. He also notes that,
again, unlike indirect reported speech, direct reported speech “can include discourse
particles such as oh and exclamations such as oh my gosh” (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 61).
As mentioned before, one of the features described as enactment is prosody. Goodwin
(2002) describes the manner in which pitch movement and volume variation can be
used by aphasic speakers in order to signal several things. Goodwin’s main subject of
study, a man in his early eighties with severe nonfluent aphasia restricting his
vocabulary to consist only three words: ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘and’. He is also able to produce
certain vocal response cries, such as oh’ and ‘ah’,. and certain ‘nonsense syllables’, such
as ‘deh’, ‘duh’ and ‘yih’. Within these units he uses pitch movement as well as variation
of stress, rhythm, and loudness in order to produce recognizable tunes which can be
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interpreted as a meaningful fashion. Thus, according to Goodwin, the aphasic speaker is
actually able to use prosody without lexicon. Also Beeke et al. (2009) have found that
many aphasic speakers in their study use a distinct pattern of level pitch or a minor pitch
on non-final lexical items and terminal falling/rising pitch movement on turn-final
lexical items, which is used to separate agrammatic words and phrases into
distinguishable turns at talk. Their analysis also revealed that aphasic speakers’
conversation partners interpret the terminal pitch movement as a signal of turn
completion and treat them as points where they can begin a turn of their own.
Next, I shall analyse the reported speech found in narratives produced by aphasic
speakers, Subjects 1 and 2.
First, I will discuss the agrammatic speakers’ tendency to use direct reported speech as
opposed to indirect reported speech. Subject 1 appears to have a strong tendency to tell
the story as reported speech, as can already be seen in the beginning of her narrative
presented in Example 37. (The same example is presented in Chapter 5 as Example 13.)
Example 37. Subject 1.
3 and there was…. and they [kei] ( = say):4 oh my ^what a-- what a Jesus.” 5 and they said,6 <HI> "oh my god </HI> watch… Jesus.“7 and say-- um… and said,8 …come come come (taps the table with fingers: imitates walking) 9 he says… and they said,10 <VOX> Th… uh… we don’t like you.11 We don’t likes you. </VOX>12 And she's goin(g),13 <HI>well hey </HI> what…um what… um we…um we, 14 we, we, we don't, we don't like us and we're going to15 tell us .
In this instalment only, Subject 1 produces seven reporting clauses: they say (line 3),
they said (line 5), (they) say (line 7), (they) said (line 7), he says (line 9), they said (line
9) and she’s going on line 12. In total, Subject 1 produces 14 reporting clauses followed
by words of the character in question, i.e. her short narrative includes 14 cases of direct
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reported speech. Thus, it can be claimed that Subject 1 shows a significant tendency to
use direct reported speech, which was expected based on the literature presented earlier
in this section (see e.g. Wilkinson et al. 2010). Subject 2 uses direct reported speech in
four occasions, presented in Examples 32, 33 and 34. Also as expected, neither of the
narratives by the two agrammatic speakers includes any cases of indirect reported
speech (see e.g. Lind 2002).
In comparison, Control 1 and Control 2 both produce only one reporting clause, Control
1 while narrating the lines of the Prince looking for Cinderella (line 10) and Control 2
on line 73 narrating the words of the Prince’s servant, who wants Cinderella to try on
the glass slipper. While Control 1 produces a reporting clause, which is followed by
several lines of speech, Subject 1 typically only produces one short utterance after each
reporting clause. Keeping in mind that Subject 1 is narrating most of the story in the
form of reported speech, this results in numerous reporting clauses, as stated above.
What is remarkable in the narrative by Subject 1 is her ability to produce reporting
clauses, which is rarely seen among agrammatic speakers. According to Wilkinson et al.
(2010: 63), the omission of the reporting verb before the enactment, in this case direct
reported speech, is very typical for speakers with aphasia. Instead of a reporting clause,
many agrammatic speakers announce the speaker whose words they are reporting by
using a topic-comment structure, which can also be found in Examples 38 and 39 by
Subject 2:
Example 38. Subject 2.
27 the the the the [sɛlərɛlə] (= Cinderella)28 `thank ^you,
Example 39. Subject 2.
38 ^Cinderella,39 hey, I `gotta go.40 so [don] [dau] down down down, (gestures downwards)
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In Examples 38 (seen earlier in Example 21) and 39 (seen earlier in Example 23),
Subject 2 identifies the reported speaker, Cinderella, as the topic and the enactment, i.e.
direct reported speech, as the comment, which according to Wilkinson et al. (2010: 66)
can be seen as a display of the speaker successfully depicting the pragmatic relations
between the items instead of portraying the relations between the speaker and her words
by using subordinate, presumably more difficult, structures. As Wilkinson et al. notes,
the topic-comment structure is often very efficient. Also in these examples, the relation
between the name mentioned and the direct quote becomes evident; knowing the
context it appears that Cinderella is thanking her Fairy Godmother for giving her a new
ball gown in Example 38, and telling the Prince she has to leave in Example 39.
In addition to presenting the quoted speaker using the topic-comment structure, Subject
2 also produces two utterances of direct reported speech without identifying the speaker,
which are presented in Example 40.
Example 40. Subject 2.
42 he… uh `Cinderella one more ^[miʃən] (=minute?)?43 [p] but I don't `care,44 `[sIlədərɛlə] (=Cinderella) in the ^horse four ^horses on
(gestures going)
This instalment includes two cases of direct reported speech produced as a minimal
dialogue. As described in Chapter 5, a likely interpretation of this part of the narrative is
that the Prince asking Cinderella to stay for one more minute but she ignores him and
leaves the ball. Neither of these utterances of direct reported speech is preceded by a
person reference or a reporting verb, which results in semantically obscure utterances.
Without the context, it is difficult to interpret who the reported speaker is or whether
there are more than one reported speaker in this example. In addition to context, another
clue for interpreting these lines is in the ordering of the elements. According to
Wilkinson et al. (2010: 70), agrammatic speakers often employ temporal iconicity, i.e.
the events are told in chronological order, which is described more thoroughly in
Chapter 5.
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In addition to the four utterances of lexical reported speech, Subject 2 also produces one
“nonlinguistic quotation” (Wilkinson et al. 2010: 60, term originally by Clark and
Gerrik 1990), presented in Example 41.
Example 41. Subject 2.
22 uh and then [n] uh [tʃɑ:dʒ] one two three four (gestures around)
23 uh the ^horse, … four ´four ^horses, (shows four fingers)24 and the… ^carriage and the um… the the ^dress,25 um ^new skirt and the ^birds uh,
In this example, with four whisks of her magic wand, the Fairy Godmother conjures up
four horses, a carriage and a new ball gown for Cinderella. On line 22, Subject 2 mimics
the sound coming from the wand and produces an onomatopoetic interjection [tʃɑ:dʒ]
(Wilkinson et. al. 2010: 60). Onomatopoeia, the imitation of a sound, was briefly
described earlier in this section as one example of iconicity. In this case, the
onomatopoetic interjection appears to be a very useful device, since, because of its
iconicity, it allows the speaker to demonstrate what the sound is like, thus making it
possible for the speaker to avoid having to produce many structures that feature
complex verb structures that describe the emergence of the horses, the carriage and the
dress (Wilkinson et al. 2010).
In several occasions, Subject 1 uses reported speech to describe action or movement
involved in the progression of the narrative, as seen in Examples 42 and 43. Subject 2
also uses a similar kind of a strategy for presenting progression of the story on line 39
(see Example 39).
Example 42. Subject 1.
16 and she says 17 " oh ^come with me.”
Example 43. Subject 1.
24 and she said,
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25 <L> “oh `let's do the ^gates” </L>
It appears that Subjects 1 and 2 have preserved their ability to use verbs in connection to
direct reported speech quite well, which could be explained with the simple form of the
verb in each of the examples: the verbs come, do and go do not acquire grammatical
affixes, which are typically difficult to produce for agrammatic speakers. In these
examples, direct reported speech serves as a device for describing actions in an
economical way without too many delays which may occur while agrammatic speakers
attempt to use more conventional methods, e.g. syntactically more complex structures
(Wilkinson 2010: 79). For instance, indirect reported speech would acquire using
subordination. According to Wilkinson et al., while some speakers with nonfluent
aphasia may, in fact, be able to produce a subject-verb construction if they take their
time, they choose not to do this because of the possible delays in progressivity, which
could potentially attract attention to their linguistic incompetence.
Since Subjects 1 and 2 use verbs describing actions or movement in direct reported
speech, it can be claimed that these cases of reported speech serve a narrative function,
i.e. to describe progression from one event to another instead of using actual narrative
clauses, as mentioned in Chapter 5.
As mentioned above, aphasic speakers often employ several paralinguistic devices
within one turn unit to enhance their communication. In Example 41 (above) and
Example 44 (seen before as a part of Examples 13, 28, 37 and 31), Subject 1 and
Subject 2 complete their utterances using kinesic enactment.
Example 44. Subject 1.
7 and say-- um… and said,8 " …come come come” (taps the table with fingers: imitates walking)
In both of these examples, the agrammatic speaker produces the kinesic enactment, i.e.
gestures or body movement, together with lexical items. In Example 44, Subject 1 is
reporting the Fairy Godmother instructing Cinderella to come to her. For each time she
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says come, she taps the table with her hand, which gives the words an accentuated and
imperative feeling. Perhaps Subject 1 is trying to describe the Fairy Godmother telling
Cinderella to hurry up, because the ball is about to start and they need to get her ready
in time.
In Example 44, Subject 2 describes Cinderella ascending the stairs of the castle by
saying down down down and gesturing a downwards direction. Stairs of any kind are
not mentioned in the example, but in the context of the Cinderella story and Subject 1
signalling that Cinderella has to go down, the content of the instalment becomes
evident. According to Wilkinson et al., this kind of practice forms an efficient and
grammatically simple way of communicating a reported speaker’s action (Wilkinson et
al. 2010: 64, see also Beeke et al. 2007).
Example 45 presents another form of enactment used by agrammatic speakers: using the
discourse particle oh.
Example 45. Subject 1.
32 he said,33 <CRY> “oh my `god”</CRY>34 <A> she said,35 “oh.” </A>
As mentioned in Chapter 5, it is difficult to say exactly what Subject 1 is trying to
narrate on the lines presented in Example 45. he on line 32 presumably refers to the
prince, as he is the only male character introduced in the story so far. oh my god on line
33 is articulated using a crying voice quality, presumably to express the feelings of the
Prince. As stated in Chapter 5, the crying voice quality gives the impression that the
Prince is feeling emotional or sad, perhaps because Cinderella left the ball in such a
hurry and he does not know who she is or where to find her.
On line 35, Subject 1 articulates a single discourse particle oh which appears to be
Cinderella’s answer to the Prince’s cry of oh my god described above. Wilkinson et al.
(2010: 66) cite Heritage (1984: 299), who notes that oh is a change-of-state token used
to signal that the reported speaker has gone through some kind of a change in his
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understanding of the current event. Wilkinson et al. (2010: 67) also note that Oh occurs
as a marked structure in agrammatic enactments because it often constitutes the whole
of the enacted utterance, as opposed to, e.g. being the first item in the utterance.
According to Wilkinson et al. (2010: 61), both oh and oh my gosh, which shall be
discussed in connection to the next example, can be used to display the affect featured
in the reported speaker’s meaning. However, in this instalment, this probably is not the
case, since Subject 1 produces lines 34 and 35 without any detectable affect in her
voice. Subject 1 produces these lines using very rapid speech, which gives the
impression that the content is not very significant in a semantic sense.
Evaluative devices, linguistic ways of expressing emotions and opinions, were
discussed in Chapter 5, where it was noted that in the narratives by Subject 1 and
Subject 2, many of the words and phrases conveying feelings appear as a part of direct
reported speech, as portrayed in Example 46 (previously seen as part of Example 13).
Example 46. Subject 1.
9 he says… and they said,10 <VOX> Th… uh… we don’t like you.11 We don’t likes you. </VOX>12 And she's goin(g),13 <HI> well hey </HI> what…um what… um we…um we, 14 we, we, we don't, we don't like us and we're going to15 tell us .
As stated earlier, it appears that on lines presented in Example 46, Subject 1 is
describing the setting of the story, i.e. Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters being
mean and treating her badly. In this instalment the most obvious cases of evaluation
appear in the form of verb like. As Armstrong & Ulatowska (2007) note, evaluation in
narratives is often performed using certain words and phrases expressing feelings or
opinions, e.g. verbs such as love or hate. In the narrative produced by Subject 1, like is
the only verb which can be considered to be clearly evaluative. While the use of the
verb appears to be slightly agrammatic (on line 11 subject does not agree with the verb
and the meaning of we don’t like us on line 15 is unclear), it can be claimed that the
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evaluative nature of reported speech presented on lines 11–15 is rather clear, i.e. the
stepsisters are expressing their dislike towards Cinderella.
One of the most striking features of the direct reported speech by Subject 1 is the vast
amount of affective exclamations, most importantly oh my god, which is presented in
Example 47 (seen before as part of Example 15):
Example 47. Subject 1.
27 and they- they look <A> and he said </A>28 “`oh my god !”29 and they- <A> they don’t s#30 and they said </A>31 “oh my god !”32 they- um the ^thing33 he said,34 <CRY> “oh my god”</CRY>
In the context of the Cinderella story, it appears that in this example Cinderella enters
the ballroom and the Prince is immediately attracted to her while other people look at
her in awe. As noted above, oh my gosh/god can be used to express affect, and thus, the
exclamations by Subject 1 appear to be affective, i.e. communicating emotion, they
serve an evaluative function (Ulatowska 2011: 95).
In Example 47, it should also be noted that the prosodic qualities between the three
exclamations of oh my god differ from each other. The first two on lines 28 and 31 are
produced without any special voice quality, while the third oh my god on line 34 is
produced with a crying voice quality, presumably to express the emotional state of the
Prince at the moment of finding his loved one.
To summarise, it can be said that the examples of reported speech produced by aphasic
speakers presented in this section have illustrated many features of enactment and
agrammatic speech in general. As expected, the agrammatic narratives feature various
cases of direct reported speech and no cases of indirect reported speech. For an
agrammatic speaker, Subject 1 produces exceptionally many grammatical reporting
clauses with verbs, while Subject 2 does not produce any. Instead, Subject 2 employs
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the topic-comment structure with no reporting verbs and temporal iconicity to depict the
pragmatic relations between the elements. Both Subject 1 and Subject 2 appear to use
verbs of action and movement in their enactments and especially as a part of direct
reported speech in order to depict the progression of the story, making the function of
the reported speech often narrative. The stories also feature reported speech performing
an evaluative function, which is evident especially in the case of affective interjections
by Subject 1. These interjections featuring oh and oh my god illustrate the agrammatic
tendency to use these kinds of exclamations to constitute for a whole utterance, which
does not occur in the talk of non-communication-disordered speakers. Another
noteworthy feature of the use of reported speech by Subjects 1 and 2, is that they often
combine direct reported speech with other forms of enactment, such as gestures, body
movement and prosody, which often enhanced their utterances and made them more
comprehensible.
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7. Conclusion
The following research questions were addressed in this thesis: 1) Are speakers with
nonfluent aphasia able to produce a narrative featuring the structural elements of
narrative described by Labov & Waletzky? 2) Do the narratives produced by nonfluent
aphasics feature more cases of direct reported speech than the ones produced by control
speakers? 3) Do speakers with nonfluent aphasia use direct reported speech in narratives
for functions that are unusual for so-called normal speakers?
Labov & Waletzky’s (1967) theory of the superstructure of narrative describes the
structural elements found in all stories. While the symptoms of agrammatism, such as
the omission of verbs and grammatical affixes, complicates identifying these structures
at times, they can also be found in the narratives by Subjects 1 and 2. The ability to
produce a narrative with all the structural elements present was also found by Stark
(2010), who claims that presence of the elements constituting the superstructure
demonstrates the speaker’s ability to apply the correct “schematic organisational
pattern” (van Dijk 1989) on their narrative, resulting in a story that has all the features
expected from a story. Ulatowska et al. (2011: 94) also notes that in order to produce a
narrative, a speaker has to have the knowledge of the narrative form, such as the
superstructure by Labov & Waletzky, but also the ability to apply it in their
communication. According to Ulatowska et al., the superstructure forms the base for the
culturally derived script or pattern according to which stories are told, and the
knowledge of the script is usually shared by both the narrator and the listener. Since
Subjects 1 and 2 were both able to produce a narrative with all the elements of the
superstructure, it can be concluded that their conception of the organisation of a
narrative has not been impaired by the symptoms of aphasia, and they are also able to
apply it using a script suitable for a fairy tale.
According to Armstrong & Ulatowska (2007), nonfluent aphasia does not usually affect
evaluative skills of the speaker. While no evaluation as a segment of its own could be
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identified in either of the narratives, both of the subjects applied evaluative devices,
such as direct reported speech, repetition, metaphorical language and certain evaluative
terms and phrases throughout the story. Thus, it can be concluded that neither Subject 1
nor Subject 2 appear to have any significant limitations in their abilities to use
evaluative devices.
Narratives by the two agrammatic speakers featured numerous cases of direct reported
speech. According to Ulatowska et al. (2000) and Ulatowska & Olness (2003), many
nonfluent speakers show a tendency towards employing direct reported speech while
producing a narrative, and are also able to use it fluently. The same observation can be
made on the narratives by Subjects 1 and 2, who both employed direct reported speech
several times, while neither of them produced any utterances of indirect reported
speech. According to Wilkinson et al. (2010) direct reported speech is a form of
enactment, which also includes gestures and body movement as well as prosody.
According to Wilkinson, enactment results in iconic language forms, which function as
interactional methods adopted by nonfluent aphasic speakers in order to successfully
communicate despite their limited lexical and grammatical resources.
As far as the format of indirect reported speech is concerned, reporting clauses with
verbs are seldom found in narratives produced by agrammatic speakers. However,
Subject 1 produced numerous grammatical reporting clauses with verbs, while no
reporting clauses were found in the narrative by Subject 2. Instead, Subject 2 employs
the topic-comment structure with no reporting verbs and temporal iconicity, i.e.
ordering the elements in a manner which displays something of the meaning or
relationship between two or more elements (Wilkinson et al. 2010), to depict relations
between the items. These, according to Wilkinson, indicate the use of a pragmatic mode
of communication described by Givón (1979). Especially Subject 2 appears to be
relying on pragmatic relations in his narrative. According to Givón, the pragmatic mode
manifests itself as simplified syntactic structures and the paucity of grammatical
morphology. Instead of employing more complex structures, agrammatic speakers
depict the relations between objects by using topic-comment structures and temporal
iconicity. Subject 1 often used reported speech as an evaluative device in the form of
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affective interjections, which usually consisted of the discourse particle oh or oh my
god. As opposed to so-called normal speakers, Subject 1 uses these kinds of
exclamations to substitute for a whole utterance.
Regarding the functions of direct reported speech in employed by aphasic narrators,
another noteworthy feature found in the agrammatic narratives analysed for this thesis
was the use of verbs of action and movement as a part of direct reported speech, which
the agrammatic speakers appeared to use as a device for expressing progression of the
story, making the function of these utterances of quoted speech often narrative. It can be
claimed that because of the “preference for progressivity” in talk (Schegloff 1979),
agrammatic speakers may choose to narrate some events or details in their stories by
using enactments instead of purely linguistics devices because of the potential delays in
the story progression caused by agrammatism or anomia.
The findings presented in this thesis appear to illustrate phenomena which have already
been widely discussed in the literature. Most of the findings concurred with earlier
studies, but there were some details which I did not expect based on the literature, such
as the use of reporting verbs and reporting clauses by Subject 1. Naturally, no far-
reaching conclusions can be made based on the analysis of two aphasic speakers, but
nevertheless, the unexpected competence shown by Subject 1 indicates that there are
differences between the linguistic abilities of agrammatic speakers.
While the analysis conducted for this study succeeded in providing some answers to the
research questions presented above, a more thorough analysis of, for example, the
prosodic qualities of narratives by Subject 1 and Subject 2, could have resulted in more
detailed description of the functions of reported speech by aphasic speakers.
Regarding future research, it would be interesting to explore how aphasic speakers
employ direct reported speech and other forms of enactment, such as gestures, in
conversational interaction. Since using enactments and other forms of iconic language
suggest using a pragmatic mode of communication, exploring enactments employed by
aphasics in a more natural talk-in situation could provide us with more information on
the use of the pragmatic mode of communications in interaction with other people.
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Also, analysing prosodic qualities of the direct reported speech more carefully could
also highlight the functions in which it is used by aphasic speakers.
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Appendix 1: The Protocol for Story Narrative by AphasiaBank
CINDERELLA
Present picture book.
“I’m going to ask you to tell a story. Have you ever heard the story of Cinderella?(Make note of answer for demographic data. If answer is no, ask participant to tell a fairytale s/he knows.)
Do you remember much about it? These pictures might remind you of how it goes.Take a look at the pictures and then I’ll put the book away, and ask you to tell me the story in your own words.”
Allow participant to look through book (assist with page turning if needed) and then, if necessary, prompt:
“Now tell me as much of the story of Cinderella as you can. You can use any details you know about the story, as well as the pictures you just looked at.”
If participant gives a response of fewer than three utterances, or seems to falter, allow 10 seconds, then prompt:
“What happened next?” or “Go on.”
Continue until participant concludes story or it is clear s/he has finished.If no response, go to Troubleshooting questions.
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Appendix 2: Key for AphasiaBank
CHAT TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOL SUMMARY -- Abridged for AphasiaBank
Standard Template, change to fit each participant
@Begin
@Languages: eng
@Participants: PAR holland01 Participant, INV Margie Investigator
@ID: eng|Adler|PAR|71;2.|male|Anomic|adler01a|Participant||86.8|
@ID: eng|Adler|INV||||adler01a|Investigator|||
@Media: holland01a, video
@Date: 15-MAR-2006
@G: first task name (e.g., Sandwich)
*PAR: transcript goes here.
@G: second task name (e.g., Umbrella)
@End
Note: In Participant ID line, the info is:
Language|Corpus|Speaker|Age|Sex|WABtype|ParticipantID|SpeakerRole||WAB-AQ|
Basic Utterance Terminators
. period
? question
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! exclamation
Special Utterance Terminators
+… trailing off
+..? trailing off of a question
+/. interruption by another speaker
+/? interruption of a question by another speaker
+//. self-interruption
+//? self-interruption of a question
+, self completion (after an interruption)
++ other completion (after an interruption)
+"/. quotation follows on next line
+" quoted utterance occurs on this line (use at beginning of utterance
as link, not a terminator)
+". material quoted on this line was preceded by quoted material on
previous line
+< lazy overlap marking (at beginning of utterance that overlapped the
the previous utterance)
Utterance Termination Indicators
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Syntax
Intonation
Pause
Semantics
Words
@n neologism (e.g., sakov@n)
exclamations common ones: ah, aw, haha, ow, oy, sh, ugh, uhoh
interjections common ones: mhm, uhhuh, hm, uhuh
fillers common ones: &um, &uh
letters @l
letter sequence abcdefg@k
xxx unintelligible speech, not treated as a word
www untranscribed material (e.g., looking through pictures, talking with spouse), must be followed by %exp tier (see below)
&text phonological fragment (&sh &w we came home)
0v omitted verb or other part of speech (art, aux, s, subj, pobj) or word
Scoped Symbols
[: text] target/intended word for errors and assimilations
(e.g., pince [: prince] and gonna [: going to])
[*] error (e.g., paraphasia -- groke [: broke] [*])
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[/] retracing without correction (e.g., simple repetition)
put repeated items between <> unless only one word was repeated
[//] retracing with correction (e.g., simple word or grammar change)
put changed items between <> unless only one word was changed
word [x N] word repeated N times
Local Events
&=text simple local event and gestures (e.g., &=laughs, &=sighs,
&=ges:fishing, &=head:shake, &=ges:wave)
(.) pause between words
(..) long pause between words
(…) extra long pause between words
(2:13.12) pause of 2 minutes and 13.12 seconds
Dependent Tiers
%gpx: gestural and proxemic activity that extends through the whole sentence
%exp: must be used following www line to explain material not transcribed
(e.g., %exp: talks to spouse, %exp: looks through pictures)
Other
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() shortenings -- e.g., runnin(g) for running, (be)cause for because
Reminders
Use caps for proper nouns and the word "I" only; do not use caps at beginning of utterances.
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