Singing as a Resource in Conversations Involving Persons with Dementia

Abstract

While dementia may affect language and communicative functioning and influence the organization of talk in interaction as conversationalists orient to the effects, activities of singing seem to be altered in less significant ways. This paper describes a single case study of how a 90-year-old Danish woman who is diagnosed with dementia at a severe stage breaks into song while having a conversation with a visiting researcher. Employing Conversation Analytic (CA) methods, the paper substantiates and elaborates on the work by Jefferson (in Text and Performance Quarterly, 16(1):1–61, 1996) and Schegloff (in Texas Linguistic Forum, 48: 17–30, 2005) on how singing, humming and being poetic may occur by association while being responsive to the social and interactional environments. The paper shows that breaking into song may also be a relevant response to talk in interaction that involves participants diagnosed with dementia.