Robert W. Schrauf - Böcker

Language Development Over the Lifespan is a reference resource for those conducting research on language development and the aging process, and a supplementary textbook for courses in applied linguistics/bilingualism programs that focus on language attrition/aging and adult literacy development in second languages. It offers an integrative approach to language development that examines changes in language over a lifetime, organized by different theoretical perspectives, which are presented by well-known international scholars.

Language Development Over the Lifespan is a reference resource for those conducting research on language development and the aging process, and a supplementary textbook for courses in applied linguistics/bilingualism programs that focus on language attrition/aging and adult literacy development in second languages. It offers an integrative approach to language development that examines changes in language over a lifetime, organized by different theoretical perspectives, which are presented by well-known international scholars.

Attention to cultural variation has become an important source of insight in the social, behavioural, and health sciences. Mixed methods research provides an especially sensitive and powerful way to make systematic cross-cultural comparisons, in which qualitative approaches give a window onto cultural meaning and the phenomenological 'feel' of social life, and quantitative methods facilitate hypothesis testing and sophisticated modelling of social and behavioural phenomena. For researchers engaged in cross-cultural projects, this book offers a theory-based approach to integrating 'numbers' and 'text' based on discourse as the originary form of data collection, the method and framework of analysis, and the medium of publication. The book provides concise explanations, targeted examples, step-by-step instructions, and actual analyses of cross-cultural, quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data, with special attention to language(s) and translation as clues to the study of cultural variation.

This book brings together international, linguistic research with a focus on interaction in multilingual encounters involving people with dementia in care and healthcare settings. The methodologies used (Conversation Analysis, Ethnography and Discursive Constructionism) capture practices on the micro-level, revealing how very subtle details may be of critical importance for the everyday well-being of participants with dementia, particularly in settings and contexts where there is a lack of a common verbal language of interlocutors, or where language abilities have been lost as a result of dementia. Chapters analyse the practices and actions employed by interlocutors to facilitate mutual understanding, enhance high-quality social relations and assure optimal care and treatment, in spite of language and cognitive difficulties, with an emphasis put on the participants’ remaining capacities, and what can be achieved between people with dementia and their interlocutors in a collaborative fashion. This book goes beyond the study of two-party communication to address multiparty and group interactions which are common in residential care and other healthcare settings and will be of interest to professionals and policy makers as well as to medical sciences and linguistics researchers and students.

This volume takes the positive view that conversation between persons with dementia and their interlocutors is a privileged site for ongoing cognitive engagement. The book aims to identify and describe specific linguistic devices or strategies at the level of turn-by-turn talk that promote and extend conversation, and to explore real-world engagements that reflect these strategies.Final reflections tie these linguistic strategies and practices to wider issues of the "self" and "agency" in persons with dementia. Thematically, the volume fosters an integrated perspective on communication and cognition in terms of which communicative resources are recognized as cognitive resources, and communicative interaction is treated as reflecting cognitive engagement. This reflects perspectives in cognitive anthropology and cognitive science that regard human cognitive activity as distributed and culturally rooted.This volume is intended for academic researchers and advanced students in applied linguistics, linguistic and medical anthropology, nursing, and social gerontology; and practice professionals in speech-language pathology and geropsychology.

This volume takes the positive view that conversation between persons with dementia and their interlocutors is a privileged site for ongoing cognitive engagement. The book aims to identify and describe specific linguistic devices or strategies at the level of turn-by-turn talk that promote and extend conversation, and to explore real-world engagements that reflect these strategies.Final reflections tie these linguistic strategies and practices to wider issues of the "self" and "agency" in persons with dementia. Thematically, the volume fosters an integrated perspective on communication and cognition in terms of which communicative resources are recognized as cognitive resources, and communicative interaction is treated as reflecting cognitive engagement. This reflects perspectives in cognitive anthropology and cognitive science that regard human cognitive activity as distributed and culturally rooted.This volume is intended for academic researchers and advanced students in applied linguistics, linguistic and medical anthropology, nursing, and social gerontology; and practice professionals in speech-language pathology and geropsychology.

Researchers in applied linguistics have found medical and health contexts to be fertile grounds for study, from macro-levels of conceptual analyses to micro-levels of the "turn-by-turn." The rich array of health contexts include medical research itself, clinical encounters, medical education and training, caregivers and patients in everyday life – from the formal and ritualized to the ad hoc and ephemeral. This volume foregrounds the crucial role of applied linguists addressing real world problems, while simultaneously highlighting the varied ways that health can be understood as a rich site of language inquiry in its own right. Chapters cover a range of health topics including medical training, medical interaction, disability in education, health policy analysis and recommendations, multidisciplinary research teams, and medical ethics. While reporting and reflecting on their specific topics in clinical and health contexts, contributors also articulate their own hybrid identities as professional collaborators in health research, education, and policy.