When the other narrates for the aphasic: observing evaluations and entextualizations

ABSTRACT

The diversity of configurations present in oral narratives as short or long stories of the past, present, future, personal or vicarious experiences led to the assumption that in the process of narrating, actions such as evaluations and entextualizations are co-productions of the interactants. As such, we set out to investigate these two categories in oral narratives about neurological disorders told by aphasics’ companions. In our analyzes, we use the theoretical-methodological framework of narrative analysis (an affluent of discourse analysis) as well as theoretical constructs from sociological and anthropological studies, which greatly contribute to the analysis of narratives. Results show that the construction of meanings was interactionally achieved by evaluations and entextualizations, which also contributed to the configuration of the narratives as dramas and reportable stories. We can, therefore, argue that the tellability of the narratives was interactionally constructed using performative resources by the aphasic’s relatives.

Keywords:
entextualization; evaluation; narrative; aphasia