An Empirical Study Of Aphasics Speech Recovery From The Aspect Of Sociolinguistics

There exists a close relationship between linguistics and aphasia. On the one hand, linguistics not only provides the study of aphasia with a theoretical framework and the necessary technical terms, but also provides speech therapists with theoretical instructions. On the other hand, the study of aphasia provides linguistics with opportunities for linguists to verify their various linguistic theories.Other researchers have done plenty of work in the field of aphasia study from the perspective of linguistics. Some linguists have studied the aphasics' speech from the perspective of psycholinguistics, as well as pragmatics. Moreover, some linguists have approached the topic from sociolinguistic perspective. However, few researchers have applied the theory of social factors, which falls within the scope of sociolinguistics, to the study of aphasics' speech. Therefore, based on other researchers' findings, this thesis attempts to approach the speech of aphasics (referring to those who have received medical treatment) from a sociolinguistic perspective. Moreover, there has been little systematic study on aphasia in China, particularly from the sociolinguistic perspective. Therefore, the author attempts to approach the Chinese aphasics' speech tentatively and empirically. The present research makes an attempt to find out some new aspects for the study of aphasiology and linguistics. This thesis puts forward several hypotheses. First, social factors have some influence on the aphasics' speech recovery to a certain extent. Secondly, the findings of the present research is likely to provide other researchers, e.g. speech therapists with a theoretical reference to devise aphasics' speech recovery program. Thirdly, the findings of this research is hoped to make some contributions to the study of linguistics. The present research gains a sociolinguistic insight in the examining of the discursive features of aphasics' speech, thus having worked through verbal description toward a rich interpretation of aphasics' speech.This thesis is based on the author's fieldwork in 2003 in the Neuro-department of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, during which she has collected the recordings of twenty-seven subject aphasics'. Twenty aphasics are selected assubject aphasics. In the interview, a tape recorder is used in all cases and transcription of it is made afterwards. Based on this transcription, the first-hand data of twenty subject aphasics' are collected. Some tentative conclusions have been drawn after analyzing the data, which is based on the theory of social factors.The whole thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter discusses the importance and necessity of the present research. And several research hypotheses have been put forward in this chapter. Chapter two is the literature review, which summarizes other researchers' findings of aphasia study respectively from clinical and linguistic perspectives. The clinical researchers are found to be more tentative to the study of aphasia treatment. In their opinions, the damage to the brain is the cause of aphasia, while linguists have mainly applied the theories of psycholinguistics as well as pragmatics to the study of aphasics' speech. And relevance theory is also applied to the study of aphasics' speech. Their findings demonstrate that a close relationship exists between aphasiology and linguistics. Linguists show more interest in the study of aphasics' speech, and the study of aphasia can promote the development of linguistics. Chapter three displays the processes of the present research, which offers the method of this study. The questionnaire of the present research is based on the Aphasia Battery of Chinese (For the convenience of the present research, the author has limited her questions to those pertinent to linguistic study). It mainly consists of conversation, comprehension, repetition, naming, as well as narrating which is added tentatively to the questionnaire by the author for the sake of the present research. Moreover, the transcri...