Changes in aphasic discourse after contrasting treatments for anomia

del toro and altmann, raymer, leon, blonder, and rothi

This paper introduces new discourse concept: Utterance with New Information (UNI)

Researchers interviewed aphasic subjects, hired transcriptionist to transcribe, gave treatment, then gave another interview and transcribed. They counted instances of nouns, verbs, etc. and were unable to say that treatment led to better utterances.

But they were able to find greater quality of discourse after treatment.

"These findings demonstrate that discourse analysis can be a viable adjunct for assessing word retrieval treatment outcomes, especially given that improving discourse is the ultimate goal of aphasia treatment."

The Culture of Empowerment: Driving and Sustaining Change

Mary Theresa Seig

Conner Prairie wanted to enhance their visitors' experience so they worked on empowering their "front line staff workers." Staff workers collaboratively created solutions that were their own.

Seig used the "Fly on the Wall" method to collect data and used discourse analysis to show that the "monologue culture" at Conner Prairie was not meeting the visitors' needs. Management worked on changing the culture of Conner Prairie from the top-down and creating solutions from the bottom-up.