Formulating actions and events with limited linguistic resources: Enactment and iconicity in agrammatic aphasic talk

In this article a conversation analytic approach is used to investigate the form and use of enactment by speakers with agrammatic aphasia in talk-in-interaction. Enactment here refers to the employment by participants of direct reported speech and/or other behavior such as the use of gesture/body movement and/or prosody to iconically depict some aspects of reported scenes or events. The enactment of these speakers is notable in terms of the distinctive grammatical practices within which it is regularly produced (e.g., without any reporting verb such as say) and a reliance on kinesic enactment and simple lexical forms produced as seconds, i.e., reactions or second pair-part responses such as oh, no, and oh no. It is argued that enactment and other instances of iconicity within interaction as produced by these aphasic speakers are examples of interactional methods adopted by them in order to formulate actions and events in talk using the limited lexical and grammatical resources at their disposal, and some similarities to other types of language use such as child language and pidgins are noted. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.