Narrative and Informational Dimensions of AAC Discourse in the Workplace

Abstract

This chapter is an application of a corpus-based, multidimensional approach to discourse analysis pioneered by Biber (Variation across speech and writing, 1988; Dimensions of register variation: A cross-linguistic perspective, 1995; University language: A corpus-based study of spoken and written registers, 2006) to examine linguistic co-occurrence patterns in the language of individuals with communication impairments who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices in the workplace. Specifically, we utilize the linguistic dimensions extracted by Friginal (Discourse Studies, 10:715–736, 2008; The language of outsourced call centers: A corpus-based study of cross-cultural communication, 2009) from oral, telephone-based interactions in a business setting. The AAC and Non-AAC Workplace Corpus (ANAWC) (Pickering and Bruce, The AAC and non-AAC workplace corpus (ANAWC). [Collection of electronic texts], 2009) used in this chapter comprises over 200 hours of spoken interaction (approximately 1 million words) involving 8 focal participants and more than 100 interlocutors in 7 different work locations. The linguistic patterns and trends within three dimensions from Friginal’s model are interpreted further to identify contributing factors and features characterizing AAC and non-AAC workplace interactions. Our results suggest that AAC discourse can be clearly differentiated from non-AAC discourse along textual and functional domains. AAC texts make use of more informational, non-narrative, and procedural textual features of discourse than their non-AAC counterparts.