Referential metadiscourse in the context of aphasia and Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Integrated to acts of reference, metadiscourse refers to those reflexive movements made by speakers on their own statements or on others' statements during interaction. Referential metadiscourse occurs in order to signal the construction of social meaning and the way conversation is organized and managed. Two hypotheses guide this article: i) referential acts constitute an important way to give visibility to the relationship between language and cognition; observing these acts, we can understand how interactants contextualize and construct social meaning; ii) the two types of referential metadiscourse – textual and interactional (acc. Jubran, 2002, 2005) – make evident different reflexive actions performed by individuals with aphasia and Alzheimer's disease.