Abstract
The chapter aims to present and discuss the contributions of Linguistics to the study of aphasias, especially regarding the power of discursive theories to subsidize language assessment and therapeutic follow-up with aphasic individuals. Jakobson, in 1956, based on Saussure’s approach and on Luria’s neuropsychological theory, was the first scholar to call for the participation of linguists in this field, once “aphasia is a problem of language”. Nonetheless, aphasia does not disturb only linguistic formal levels – phonetical-phonological, syntactic, lexical-semantic –, but also pragmatic and discursive aspects of language that are constitutive of meaning processes involved in the social use of language. Unfortunately, more traditional approaches to language assessment and to the follow-up work are exclusively based on metalinguistic tasks, which do not take into consideration the subjective and contextual aspects of language functioning. The experience we have acquired over more than thirty years within the field of Neurolinguistics has shown that qualitative longitudinal researches – mainly case studies – are a privileged locus to seek for evidences of how the linguistic levels are impacted in the several forms of aphasia. Such understanding, in turn, favor the therapeutic work towards more contextualized activities, in order to help the individuals to reorganize their linguistic-cognitive processes.
Highlights
The study of aphasias by linguists started only after 1956, when Jakobson [1]—a disciple of Saussure [2]—summoned them to engage in research in the field
Influenced by the works of Luria [3–6] in Neuropsychology, Jakobson was intrigued by the fact that scientists from different areas were interested in aphasia phenomena, while Linguistics passed over them in silence
Another concept developed by Jakobson, regarding aphasia phenomena, is the one of “translation”, which has been mobilized by Discursive Neurolinguistics and concerns the fact that aphasic individuals frequently recur to non-verbal signs in order to refer to the verbal signs that they cannot select and/or combine while trying to produce meaning within interactional and dialogical processes [24]
Summary
The study of aphasias by linguists started only after 1956, when Jakobson [1]—a disciple of Saussure [2]—summoned them to engage in research in the field. Both structuralist and generative theories, respectively postulated by Saussure and Chomsky, influenced neuropsychological models that ground most metalinguistic assessment tasks that, in turn, guide research as well as the clinical work in the field of aphasia Such approaches may enlighten mechanisms involved in language processing, for the development of theoretical models, they do not take into consideration important aspects of language functioning – of pragmatic and discursive nature – that are relevant to shed lights on the understanding of language alterations in each concrete case of aphasia and, still more relevant, to provide adequate intervention in the rehabilitation procedures [12, 13, 15].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
