CONVERSATIONAL PRINCIPLES AND APHASIC COMMUNICATION

A sketch of some of the possible workings of conversational maxims and principles in interactions involving aphasic persons is given. The frameworks provided by Grice (1975, 1978) and Allwood (1976) are applied in order to describe how aphasic symptoms and strategies caused by these symptoms affected the interactions. Problems regarding the use of quantity and manner maxims are exemplified and discussed, as well as some more indirect problems having to do with the use of the maxims of relevance and quality. Among the characteristics of interactions involving aphasics with restricted speech production (mainly aphasics with anterior lesions) are compensatory politeness strategies, pointing to the influence of the principles of cooperation and of ethical and cognitive consideration; frequent over-interpretation by the non-aphasic interlocutor; and heavy reliance on inferences from background information and context. The consequences of these characteristics and of the uncertain linguistic basis for the use of conversational maxims are, for example, the risk of non-understanding and misunderstanding; problems with flouting of conversational maxims in communication and a tendency towards long unwanted sequences. Some suggestions for a clinical application of the findings are given.