Reported Speech in Speakers with Sensorial Aphasia: Its Formal and Functional Properties

Abstract

Sensory aphasia is a language disorder produced by a neurological damage in left hemisphere's temporal lobe, where it is altered all expressive language form. Frequently, it has been argued that these patients are able to communicate exploiting those resources which
they keep even though pathology. These resources include reported speech, which it has been described as a tool that enables it to aphasics enrich his / her narratives to involve his / her interlocutors in it; however, there is still no research focused on this phenomenon in Spanish speakers patients. Thus, in this paper we have two goals: (i) to analyze if our patients keep ability to use reported speech in his / her narrations and, if this is the case, ii) characterizer its formal and functional properties. Our sample is composed of three patients with sensory aphasia, two with vascular etiology and one with tumor etiology. All three were evaluated
using Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination. It was found that all patients are able to use reported speech, according to their formal features and they use it for accomplish specific functions of compensation and intensification. This suggests that patients with sensory aphasia are aware of their linguistic deficits and thus try to exploit the communicative tools that they keep.