Discourse, Dialect and Aphasia in the Western Cape

Abstract

This paper focuses on the effects of mild-moderate aphasia on discourse and dialect within a particular population, the so-called "Coloured" population residing in the Western Cape. This population, with its distinct dialectal variations of English and Afrikaans and its strong traditional roots in bilingualism, offers a unique and fruitful context in which to examine pathological language. In this study dialect was considered within discourse, which allowed for the robustness of dialect, ethnic and cultural forms to be revealed. A control group was selected with a view to differentiating aspects of discourse, which seemed linked to dialectal features and those which reflected the compensatory attempts of adults with aphasia in discourse. Various narrative tasks, each assessing different levels of language and cognitive complexity, were used to elicit discourse. The results of this study revealed that individuals with mild to moderate aphasia exhibited preserved dialectal features, albeit intermingled with aphasia associated difficulties. These findings suggest that well-developed sociolinguistic adaptation strategies of the Coloured speaker provides a useful foundation in the event of aphasia. Shifting and flexibility, which are the essence of the dialects studied, provide the individual with aphasia a range of mechanisms for compensating and communicating which may not be available to those from a more monolingual environment.