“It all brings me back to the life I had”

the co-construction of an autobiographical narrative in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative pathology that affects, among other cognitive functions, language, causing difficulties in lexical access, phonological articulation, syntactic organization and changes in pragmatic elements of conversation that impair daily interactions. In view of this context, the present article analyzes the face-to-face interaction of a person affected by AD in the moderate phase, with a researcher in a situation of narrative interview. Based on the assumption that using language is to engage in a collaborative action, specifically the production of an autobiographical narrative, the present work is based on the theoretical apparatus of Conversation Analysis, Oral Narrative Studies and Textual Linguistics. The autobiographical narrative that we will analyze in this article includes a corpus of interactions recorded with a participant affected by AD. The analyzes show that the participant maintains a collaborative attitude throughout the interaction, co-building referents with the interlocutor, even when deficits caused by the pathology arise. In addition, the participant’s narrative performance is characterized by an autobiographical narrative that emerges in the discursive-interactional context playing the role of reframing her life experience in the face of the disease.