A co-construção de identidades em interações face-a-face entre pessoas com e sem afasia de expressão

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate how people with non-fluent aphasia construct and negociate identities in face-to-face interactions. Non-fluent aphasia is a symptom of a cerebral damage displayed by difficulties in producing talk. Through the use of concepts derived from Conversational Analysis and Interactional Sociolinguistics, it is observed how issues related to linguistic deficit become relevant in talk-in-interaction in conversations among persons with and without non-fluent aphasia. The corpus is composed of approximately fifteen hours of video and audio recordings of face-to-face interactions. Thirty two representative segments in which participants engage in construction of identities were selected. The generated data provide evidence that challenges to identity may be seen as the consequence of the “unsettled lives” produced by aphasia. This case study showed that it is not all people with aphasia who project the sick person identity that society makes available for them, principally if we consider the fact that identities can be projected/sustained in a private or public space, that is, in relationships/activities into and/or outside familiar context. Another relevant distinction in this study is concerned with the fact that we look for the language in use making intervening with not only the linguistic competence, but also, with the communicative competence. In this way, the results of analysis show that despite linguistic deficit, persons with aphasia can take part, socially, in the conversations with people without aphasia if both show themselves oriented and perceive the relevance of paralinguistics or non-linguistics resources to the discourse and social identities projection and negociation into interaction in progress.