Measuring Pragmatic Competence of Discourse Output Among Chinese-Speaking Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury

EasyChair Preprint 6432

Abstract

Introduction

This study aimed to examine how pragmatic competence may be impaired and reflected in the discourse produced by Chinese-speaking TBI survivors. Moreover, whether (and which) discourse production task can be more sensitive and clinically effective to highlight pragmatic impairments in TBI would be explored. 

Methods

Language samples of 5 discourse tasks, produced by 10 TBI survivors (5 Cantonese and 5 Mandarin speakers) and 10 controls matched in age and education, were extracted from the unpublished Chinese TBI-Bank. These genres included a single picture description ‘Cat Rescue’, a multiple-picture description ‘Refused Umbrella’, a story-telling ‘Cry Wolf’, a procedural discourse ‘Egg and Ham Sandwich’, and a personal narrative (i.e., monologue) ‘An Important Event’. Each sample was analyzed with 16 indices, which were further categorized in terms of Grice’s Maxim (Grice, 1975):

• Maxim of Quality: i) # of error, ii) Index of Error, iii) Index of Syntactic Accuracy, and iv) Repairs and revisions of error
• Maxim of Quantity: v) Total # of words per task, vi) # of information words, vii) # of T-units, and viii) Words per T-unit
• Maxim of Relation: ix) Global coherence errors, x) % of global coherence errors, xi) Local coherence errors, and xii) % of local coherence errors
• Maxim of Manner: xiii) Repetition of words and phrases, xiv) Index of Lexical Efficiency, xv) Index of Communication Efficiency, and xvi) # of cohesive devices per T-units

The association between pragmatic measures and the types of discourse, amount of visual supports, and TBI survivors’ severity of language impairment and cognitive deficits will also be assessed.

Results

The final results will allow us to examine pragmatic deficits in TBI and to compare the manifestation across different genres.

Keyphrases: Chinese, aphasia, discourse, pragmatics, traumatic brain injury

@booklet{EasyChair:6432,
  author    = {Ho Ying Lai and Anthony Pak Hin Kong and Dustin Kai-Yan Lau},
  title     = {Measuring Pragmatic Competence of Discourse Output Among Chinese-Speaking Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6432},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}