Abstract：With the emergence of many aging societies around the world, the past decades have witnessed an increasing attention to gerontolinguistics. This study focuses on pragmatic compensation for the elders with cognitive impairment. Much research has shown that an individual’s cognitive impairment is reflected in speech act performance in one’s pragmatic communication. In this sense, the speech act can serve as an essential indicator for evaluating one’s pragmatic competence and judging one’s pragmatic disorders. Taking speech act as the basic unit and integrating both interlocutors’ and contextual factors, this study establishes a multimodal analytical framework of the relationship between cognitive health and speech acts of the elders. Through a case analysis, this study finds that pragmatic disorders for the elders with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are manifested in the following aspects when performing speech acts: interdependence, essential content, emotional state, etc. More repetition, inconsistency, and hand movements indicate a damage to the language system of this group. Therefore, both interpersonal and intrapersonal compensatory adaptation operates in the interaction of the elders with AD. With China’s rapid expansion of aging population, it is hoped that this study can draw more scholars’ attention to gerontolinguistics and more efforts can be devoted to the study and care of the elderly people in China.
黄立鹤，杨晶晶，刘卓娅. 认知障碍老年人语用补偿研究[J]. 语言战略研究, 2021, 6(6): 33-44.
Huang Lihe, Yang Jingjing and Liu Zhuoya. Pragmatic Compensation for the Elders with Cognitive Impairment: A Speech Act Perspective. , 2021, 6(6): 33-44.
