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Case Report Volume 2 Issue 1
Drawing as an alternative way for significance on an aphasic individual
Gisele Senhorini
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Professor at Speech Therapy, University Center of Maringá, Brazil
Correspondence: Gisele Senhorini, Professor at Speech Therapy, University Center of Maring, Tel 55 (44) 999858973
Received: June 29, 2017 | Published: October 23, 2017
Citation: Senhorini G. Drawing as an alternative way for significance on an aphasic individual. Int Phys Med Rehab J. 2017;2(1):1-2. DOI: 10.15406/ipmrj.2017.02.00036
Introduction
The present paper aims at talking about the relation between language, brain and aphasia which will be presented based on experiences with people who had cerebral lesion and are considered aphasic. The presented idea of language is understood constitutive of people, according to1 undetermined, it means, it develops itself in the enunciation, interaction with each other and finally has a historic social interference. The theoretical basis for this study is Discursive Neurolinguistics which suggests that aphasic people must assume their role as a subject to produce and interpret meanings; counting, commenting, asking, suggesting, questioning, building relationships, being connect to the world, understanding it in order to interact.
The individual becomes aphasic when there is a lack of resources for production of meanings or interpretation it means, one is not able either to express himself or to understand what the other person wants to say. Expression and comprehension resources are missed in order to make use of the language.
Although such lack of resources, psychically, cognitively, the individual keeps on having functions like seeing, thinking, observing but expressing. The individual can relate to others even though their fragility regarding the cerebral lesion. Such lesion is not denied, but analyzed. This case study will describe drawing as an alternative way used by the individual, who is called here CO, to re insert him in his social environment. CO is a 78 year-old man, polyglot and professor of Languages in the USA, who, during an earthquake in San Francisco-California had a Cerebral Vascular Accident (CVA). After this, he got an automatism “Because” and “I don’t know”. And most part of his speech is constituted by gestures and drawings.
The data of language produced with a discursive vision of subjects who are being followed, make it possible to view what represents the alternative processes of significance; a methodological theoretical formulation which has shown quite productive while language is presented, in different faces, modified by the aphasia. If the language system counts on a group of wide forms to be selected and combined to produce meaning so, there are processes of significance to be explored in the interlocution with aphasic people: this is the challenge which is used as a start point to face the conditions of language during aphasia. If aphasia affects certain structures and use of language, on the other hand the person who is aphasic looks for ways to produce alternative processes of significance.2
The representation of the aimed object is alright - structured, it depicts the elements that constitute the plot it means CO intends to communicate through his drawing, looking for elements of reality and its components, but they are not always legible for the interlocutors, being necessary a previous knowledge and involvement in the context that is being built. CO makes use of drawings to express himself since writing, sometimes, can present more difficulties. The two attempts of writing that appears in Figure 1 were initialized by the therapist (prompting).
Figure 1 CO explains to the therapist that he was born in Marumbi - PR (identified as MA), that he has traveled around the world (the circle represents Earth) and that he teaches in many languages.
For the aphasic individual who had cerebral damage and had some possibilities of practice with altered language, there may be the feeling of being excluded from the society, the prejudice imposed by it and the same prejudice established for people who are “illiterate”.3,4 The limits imposed by language when noticing and understanding the world can be overcome when the individual has the opportunity to act with and about the language. Singular stories related to written language show the way each individual learns collective stories determined by social conditions and literacy.
In order to make the drawing a representation it is necessary that such work is mediate by language. The interest is in the drawing as systems of symbolic representation and in the use the CO makes to reach the significance of ideas and generate readings by other people. “The drawing is more a language than a representation itself, since it is a graphic report about something”.5 It is highlighted that the rehabilitation in a specific process of language, during the production of speech, is a complex task. That is why the therapeutic job based on Neurolinguistics Enunciation-Discursive, emphasizes not only analyzes of word (its place in the instructions, its grammar function) but also analyzes of a language which was reached by aphasia. So, it is taken into consideration the discursive context, so that it is possible to understand the underlying processes towards to the occurrence of phenomenon.
In this context, during the dialogues between Co and IG the use of language happened in contextualized situations, through a process of interlocution, which took into consideration the stories and singularities from the participants of clinic practice. Consequently, “the linguistic singularities”, according to Neurolinguistics Enunciation-Discursive, have emerged from interactions between the individual and the investigative therapist, without any pre-determined general law or patterns of functioning. Thinking of an aphasic individual, as a person whose language is (de) structured Coundry2 says that the therapy with aphasic patients must be done internally in the language. It is in the language that the individual will reestablish the interpersonal and factual relations leading to the rebuilding of the language itself and Macedo4 complements saying that when understanding the process of a construction of a written text by an aphasic individual may provide us conditions to understand in a better way how he deals with the language.
Analyzing the history of writing and its process of development, it is observed that the main goal for CO when writing was to help the memory and mediate his relation with others and the environment where he lives. Therefore, his reports show the way he deals with his language to be able to express his subjectivity to be seen as an individual and to be understood in the context he in inserted in.6–10
Acknowledgements
None
Conflict of interest
Author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.
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