ERIC Number: EJ1464040
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Mar
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1368-2822
EISSN: EISSN-1460-6984
Available Date: 2025-02-19
Tangentiality as Non-Conformity: Responses of Participants with Right Hemisphere Damage to Questions in Clinical Interactions
Xinfang Li1; Qiang Guo2; Yongping Ran3
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, v60 n2 e70000 2025
Background: People with right hemisphere damage (PwRHD) are often reported to produce tangential or irrelevant utterances. This may be related to their conversational difficulties, including performance in making relevant responses to questions. Clinical interactions represent a major type of communicative activity that PwRHD frequently attend and where they need to answer questions raised by clinicians. So far very little is known about how PwRHD accomplish question-response sequences in such institutional interactions. Aims: To examine question-response sequences between participants with right hemisphere damage (RHD) and clinicians. To investigate how potentially tangential talk of the former that ensues after the clinicians' questions may affect their responses to questions in clinical interactions. To identify problems incurred by those utterances as responses and how clinicians utilize conversational practices to manage them. Methods & Procedures: Drawing on purposive sampling, the study used four recorded interactions between clinicians and participants with RHD as data. The data were transcribed and analysed within the framework of conversation analysis. The study focuses on question-response sequences where participants with RHD produce potentially tangential utterances as responses to questions raised by the clinicians. Outcomes & Results: Tangential utterances produced by participants with RHD occur either as overall non-conforming answers to the questions (i.e., not conforming to the normative expectations for the action type and/or grammatical form of response in the clinical setting), or non-conforming extension after type-conforming answers. The clinicians often orient to the overall non-conforming answers as problematic and utilize a set of practices to pursue adequate responses. Conclusions & Implications: The study presents a new approach to understanding tangential talk associated with RHD, framing it as non-conforming answers within question-response sequences. It also describes management practices employed by the clinicians to cope with them. The results add to knowledge about the communication profile of PwRHD, particularly in goal-oriented interactions. They may provide a reference for assessment and intervention for difficulties of PwRHD in accomplishing question-response sequences. The study also suggests that the assessment of conversational behaviours of the clinical group should be placed within wider sequences and specific communicative activities.
Descriptors: Brain, Head Injuries, Neurolinguistics, Communication Disorders, Responses, Brain Hemisphere Functions, Standard Spoken Usage, Interpersonal Communication, Interviews
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1School of English Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China; 2The Eighth Department of Neurosurgery, Guangdong Sanjiu Brain Hospital, Guangzhou, China; 3Centre for Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China