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“Well I hate to admit it but I can’t remember”

Knowing, Remembering and Performing in Everyday Life with Dementia

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Language, Dementia and Meaning Making

Abstract

In this book, I examine the ways in which participant frameworks, physical environments, activity types, and interactional goals shape how cognitive challenges and strengths are navigated as “our mental states make contact with the world” (Hughes, Thinking through dementia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011: 265)—and, crucially, how these aspects of context impact the self-esteem of individuals with dementia and their conversational partners. To this end, I analyze the language used in everyday conversations, medical visits, memory loss support group meetings, and specially designed art gallery tours through the lens of epistemic discourse analysis (van Dijk, Discourse Studies, 15, 497–500, 2013; Heritage, Research on Language and Social Interaction (ROLSI), 45, 30–52, 2012) in combination with Goffman’s (Interaction ritual. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1967; Relations in public. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1971) and Brown and Levinson’s (Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) insights into face maintenance in everyday social interaction. I explore how individuals’ changes in cognition may impact the faces of these individuals, leaving some to feel ashamed, anxious, or angry; others to feel patronized, infantilized, or overly dependent; and still others to feel threatened in both ways. In this examination, I keep in clear and central focus the important discursive choices made by healthy interactional partners that may end up minimizing or exacerbating these feelings.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ich möchte Sie, so gut ich es kann, bitten, lieber Herr, Geduld zu haben gegen alles Ungelöste in Ihrem Herzen und zu versuchen, die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben…. Forschen Sie jetzt nicht nach den Antworten, die Ihnen nicht gegeben werden können, weil Sie sie nicht leben könnten. Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein (emphasis added).

  2. 2.

    In the interactions represented in the many excerpts in this book, the reader will notice variation in naming practices related to participants across the data collections. Whereas first names are used in memory loss support group and art gallery excerpts, titles plus surnames are used in those related to the medical and assisted living visits. This variation reflects differences in naming practices used within these interactions at the time of recording.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Heidi E. Hamilton

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Hamilton, H.E. (2019). “Well I hate to admit it but I can’t remember”. In: Language, Dementia and Meaning Making. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12021-4_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12021-4_1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12020-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12021-4

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