Personal Narratives in Aphasia: Coherence in the Context of Use

Discourse functionality is a primary goal of aphasia assessment and intervention. People who have aphasia often display a paradoxical functionality in their production of discourse, despite their aphasic impairment. A variety of linguistic and non-linguistic resources are orchestrated together to produce coherent discourse. One discourse genre, the personal story, is ubiquitous and fills important intrapersonal and interpersonal functions.

The primary objective is to provide a framework for the structure and function of personal stories, to guide future clinical discourse research toward development of practical clinical assessment of discourse functionality in people who have aphasia.

Characteristics of personal stories in their context of use are discussed for their contributions to overall discourse coherence. Examples of coherent and incoherent personal stories narrated by people who have aphasia illustrate interactions among coherence-building resources. The influence of group contexts and cultural contexts on coherence of personal stories is considered.

It is the interaction, and not the componential addition, of multiple resources that supports coherent production of personal stories in context. Qualitative frameworks need to be integrated with quantitative approaches as we develop reliable and valid means of functional discourse assessment. An understanding of the lives of people who have aphasia will be essential for defining the most meaningful and functional contexts for our discourse assessments.