Multilingual Interaction and Dementia

This sparkling collection highlights the contribution of interactional research on dementia, revealing the complex interplay between the person with dementia and the people around them staff, family and friends. The multilingual focus is a welcome acknowledgement that we live and conduct our affairs in sickness and health in a world of overlapping languages and cultures. * Charles Antaki, Loughborough University, UK * This exciting collection significantly furthers our understanding of the challenges and opportunities of having more than one language as a resource for communication and care in the dementia context. It offers important new insights into the risks of over-simplifying the experience of a multilingual person with dementia and/or care-giver, and demonstrates the importance of fully accommodating peoples multilingual skills and needs. * Alison Wray, Cardiff University, UK * This volume constitutes a milestone in putting the multilingual challenge in dementia care on the agenda. Through in-depth analyses of actual encounters involving persons with dementia, it highlights both the nature of the challenges involved in these complex communicative situations, and conversational practices that are shown to be effective in overcoming these challenges. * Jan Svennevig, University of Oslo, Norway *

Charlotta Plejert is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Culture and Communication, and a researcher at Center for Dementia Research (CEDER) at Linkping University, Sweden. Her research interests include Conversation Analysis, communicative disabilities in children and adults, and second language interaction and acquisition. Camilla Lindholm is Acting Professor at the Department of Finnish Language, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her main research areas are interaction in institutional settings, and asymmetric interaction involving participants with communication impairment. Robert W. Schrauf is Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University. He conducts empirical research on language, ethnicity and Alzheimers disease, and methodological research on the use of mixed methods for making cross-cultural comparisons.

Biographies Acknowledgements Sinfree Makoni: Preface 1. Charlotta Plejert, Camilla Lindholm and Robert W. Schrauf: Multilingual Interaction and Dementia 2. Camilla Lindholm: Aging as A Swedish-Speaking Finn: Positioning and Language Choice at a Nursing Home 3. Nicole Mller: Fear N Bean, a Man or a Woman? Bilingual Encounters in Residential Eldercare in Ireland 4. Ali Reza Majlesi, Eleonor Antelius and Charlotta Plejert: Epistemic Negotiations in Interpreter-Mediated Dementia Evaluations: The Co-Operative Role of Patients Relatives 5. Gunilla Jansson and Cecilia Wadensj: Creating Opportunities for Residents to Engage in Social Exchange: Brokering in Multilingual Residential Care Settings 6. Jeff Small, Sing Mei Chan, Elisabeth Drance, Judith Globerman, Lorraine Ho, Wendy Hulko, Deborah O'Connor, JoAnn Perry and Louise Stern: Verbal and Nonverbal Turn-Taking Actions of Care Staff and Residents in Linguistically Diverse Long-Term Care Settings 7. Maziar Yazdanpanah and Charlotta Plejert: Accommodation Practices in Multilingual Encounters in Swedish Residential Care 8. Robert W. Schrauf and Michael Amory: Training in Clinical Assessment: Proxying, Translating and Voice-Over as Discursive Devices 9. Boyd Davis and Margaret Maclagan: Challenges and Experiences in Training Multilingual, International Direct Care Workers in Dementia Care in the US 10. Charlotta Plejert, Camilla Lindholm and Robert W. Schrauf: Multilingual Interaction and Dementia. Future Directions for Research and Practice