Mikesell2020

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Mikesell2020
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Mikesell2020
Author(s) Lisa Mikesell
Title Does Atypicality Entail Impairment? Tracing the Use of a Cohesive Marker in the Interactions of an Individual with Schizophrenia
Editor(s) Ray Wilkinson, John Rae, Gitte Rasmussen
Tag(s) EMCA, Schizophrenia, Atypical interaction
Publisher
Year 2020
Language English
City
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 129-160
URL Link
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28799-3_5
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Atypical Interaction
Chapter

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Abstract

Research on “schizophrenic speech” has given significant attention to cataloguing impairments in cohesion and coherence. While much of this research has traditionally relied on well-defined laboratory tasks that elicit monologic speech samples to identify linguistic errors, recent work has called for researchers to examine situated and meaningful language use to consider impairments at the discourse level. The implication is that capturing what is impaired requires a more discursive lens than has previously been applied. Presenting a case study of a single speaker and his use of the cohesive marker like I say to tie back to previous talk, this chapter considers some of the theoretical and methodological challenges faced in examining the discourse of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia (IwS). Examining 56 cases of like I say employed across only four hours of video recorded interactions, I show that, although like I say was notably frequent, it enabled its speaker to achieve a range of social actions and to navigate challenging interactional sequences, such as sustaining small talk with an unfamiliar and unforthcoming interlocutor. The chapter makes a case not only for examining linguistic structures in situated interaction to consider what is marked, or atypical, but also for considering how such atypicality may be effectively functional for IwS in naturally occurring interactions. This chapter thus cautions against presuming that an atypical discourse practice—one that may verge from normative standards whether in frequency and/or use—is necessarily an impaired one.

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