Multimodality in aphasic conversation

Abstract

The use of gestures is one of the reasons for which some aphasics communicate better than they speak. For these aphasics as well as their partners, multimodality becomes a resource for the successful management of interaction. However, the successful employment of gesture implies multiple practices of adaptation, since there are important differences between gesture use in non-impaired and impaired aphasic interaction. In non-impaired faceto- face interaction, gestures mostly accompany language and support and influence its interpretation in various ways. Only rarely do gestures, body movements and the manipulation of artifacts take the lead, and even more rarely do they replace language entirely (Goodwin 1986, Heath 1982, 1992, Melinger & Levelt 2004). Under conditions of severe non-fluent aphasia (as described here), gestures therefore are used for functions which they cannot easily fulfill. In the absence of language, gestures become a substitute (Goodwin 2000, 2003 and 2006a, b). This uncoupling of gestural communication from language usually results in complex and often lengthy collaborative sequences in which the participants set out to co-construct what the aphasic “gesturer” means, with the non-impaired speakers providing, in a way, the missing speech for the linguistically impaired speaker (cf. Damico et al. 2008, Goodwin 2000, 2003, 2006). As we will show, these processes of coconstruction are encumbered not by the aphasics’ deficient gestures, but rather the semiotic nature of gesturing itself. We will discuss examples of successful and unsuccessful gestural communication in aphasics and suggest some reasons why gestural communication fails sometimes, but why it helps in other cases. Our observations lend support to the idea that therapy has to respect the semiotic characteristics of gesturing and the interactional practices necessary for their management in order to enhance the successful employment of the visual modality.