Deictic disturbances after right hemisphere stroke

Abstract

Confabulation is a symptom of a cognitive disorder with consequences for communication. Linguistic investigations based on the speech of confabulating individuals are rare, especially when the focus is on semantic-pragmatic aspects. This study is based on material collected from conversations with an elderly, previously non-demented woman suffering from a stroke in the right posterior hemisphere. Sections with confabulate speech were analyzed from a semantic-pragmatic point of view. A method for line-by-line investigation of the confabulate construction was developed. The analysis focuses on semantic projections and on the linguistic cueing of cognitive structures. The results indicate that confabulation is a semantic-pragmatic disorder originating in the lack of a deictic center. Deictic spaces resulting in projections of old, semantic structures provided answers when appropriate structures were not available. The confabulations were created in interaction and were determined by the context. Finally, the results reveal how the confabulating individual projected an image of herself by the use of deixis.