A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF APHASIA

Abstract

This is a cross disciplinary study as it draws upon ideas from neurology, linguistics, developmental psychology and philosophy and examines the effects of emotional security on the process of language recovery after aphasia. Language recovery after aphasia is generally studied by using the standardized terminologies from the domains of first language acquisition and second language learning. This orients and controls the ways in which researchers look into this phenomenon ignoring its own uniqueness. Overemphasis on concepts such as neural plasticity and critical period has resulted in neglecting the emotional and psychological aspects of the process. The neurological and linguistic debates over aphasia support the existence of a critical period till which the human brain can retain its plasticity. This study challenges these ideas by discovering the positive effects of emotional stability and security on language recovery of an aphasic even when s/he had crossed the so-called critical period. The study covers one year of the linguistic recovery process of the research participant. The data collection methods included audio recordings of the research participant’s speech, diary notes about her linguistic performance and discussions with her physician about the same. The insights drawn in the end strongly support the positive effects of emotional security on language recovery after aphasia. The study concludes with grounded theory that emerges from the data. The researcher has named it as her theory of emotionicology. This theory is based on the serendipitous discovery that not only initiation of positive emotions help in language recovery but also inclusion of the negative emotion, that is, aggression in controlled and mild forms (at advanced stages of recovery) can be used for further fuelling the speech production process. It is, however, suggested that aggression has to be employed with caution and should be applied only by a trained caregiver in brief episodes (of say 10-15 seconds) when the aphasic is emotionally and physically secure. This study also stresses that for the betterment of the aphasic, the caregiver has to acquire emotional competence as a skill. The understanding in the end is purely subjective, and situated. Thus, no generalization claims follow.