Discourse Analysis of Adults with Anomic and Broca's Aphasia

Abstract

Multilevel discourse analyses have been demonstrated to be more sensitive than some standardized language tests (Marini et al., 2011). Individuals with aphasia often present with both microlinguistic and macrolinguistic impairments (Wright, Fergadiotis, Koutsoftas, & Capilouto, 2010). The purpose of this study was to apply a multilevel discourse analysis, developed by Marini et al. (2011), to a group of English speaking individuals with anomic and Broca’s aphasia. Specifically, the aim was to determine if there was a difference in the percentage of correct words used, percentage of local coherence disrupting elements, and percentage of global coherence disrupting elements. Discourse samples of 20 individuals with anomic aphasia with a mean age of 63.24 (SD = 11.71) and 20 individuals with Broca’s aphasia with a mean age of 60.55 (SD = 11.39). Participants read the wordless picture book Cinderella and proceeded to retell the story. The discourse samples were coded for micro- and macrolinguistic elements as outlined by Marini et al. (2011). The analysis coded for fillers, paraphasias, repetitions, ambiguous referents, conceptually incongruent utterances, filler utterances, tangential utterances, etc. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between percent of correct words produced and the percent of local coherence disrupting elements. Global coherence did not differ between the two groups. The findings from this study extend the results to English, and also demonstrate how microlinguistic and macrolinguistic elements can be disrupted in aphasia.