Words and Gestures in Dementia Discourse

This book draws on the Multimodal Corpus of Gerontolinguistic Discourse (MCGD) to offer an in-depth analysis of pragmatic impairments and compensatory strategies among Chinese-speaking older adults with AD. It investigates how individuals navigate communicative challenges using both verbal and non-verbal resources, uncovering patterns of pragmatic decline and the multimodal strategies employed to mitigate these deficits. Specifically, the study explores three interrelated research questions: (1) What are the features of pragmatic impairments in older adults with AD? (2) What compensatory mechanisms are employed when pragmatic difficulties arise? (3) What are the overarching patterns of pragmatic decline observed in this population? The book broadens the disciplinary scope of clinical linguistics and advances the development of gerontolinguistics by focusing on older adults with neurodegenerative diseases, an underrepresented population in current research. It shifts the focus toward pragmatic impairments resulting from cognitive decline, emphasizing the value of pragmatic discourse analysis in identifying and understanding communicative changes associated with Alzheimer’s Disease and related conditions and proposing an assessment framework for evaluating pragmatic competence in older adults. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, healthcare professionals, and policy makers working at the intersection of aging, dementia care, and linguistics.