This fascinating study explores the ways of establishing coherence in the discourse of a thought-disordered patient. Ribeiro analyzes the discourse between a doctor and a patient who is under an acute psychotic crisis, and then later, when the patient is deemed recovered. Ribeiro looks at how the participants jointly establish referential meaning, and how topic coherence is achieved or breaks down. She then considers how the participants convey superordinate messages, metamessages, and how the patient signals and assesses the frame of talk. Ribeiro concludes that psychotic discourse, while incoherent on the level of topic, may be coherent on another level--that of frame. Using sociolinguistic discourse analysis, conversational analysis, and frame analysis, with a dose of theory from contemporary cognitive psychology, Ribeiro's book demonstrates the importance of contextualization in interaction.

Until very recently, coherence (unlike cohesion) was widely held to be a 'rather mystical notion'. However, taking account of new trends representing a considerable shift in orientation, this volume aims at helping relieve coherence of its mystifying aura. The general bibliography which concludes the book bears witness to this intriguing development and the rapidly changing scene in coherence research. Preceding this comprehensive up-to-date Bibliography on Coherence are 13 selected papers from the 1997 International Workshop on Coherence at the University of Augsburg, Germany. They share a number of theoretical and methodoligical assumptions and reflect a trend in text and discourse analysis to move away from reducing coherence to a product of (formally represented) cohesion and/or (semantically established) connectivity. Instead, they start from a user- and context-oriented interpretive understanding and rely on authentic data throughout in relating micro-linguistic to macro-linguistic issues. The first group of papers looks at the (re-)creation of coherence in, inter alia, reported speech, casual conversation, argumentative writing, news reports and conference contributions. The second group describes the negotation of coherence in oral examinations, text summaries and other situations that require special efforts on the part of the recipient to overcome misunderstandings and other disturbances. The third group discusses theoretical approaches to the description of coherence.

The concept of framing has been pivotal in research on social interaction among anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and linguists. This collection shows how the discourse analysis of frames can be applied to a range of social contexts. Tannen provides a seminal theoretical framework for conceptualizing the relationship between frames and schemas as well as a methodology for the discourse analysis of framing in interaction. Each chapter makes a unique theoretical contribution to frames theory while showing how discourse analysis can elucidate the linguistic means by which framing is accomplished in a particular interactional setting. Applied to such a wide range of contexts as a medical examination, psychotic discourse, gender differences in sermon performance, boys' "sportscasting" their own play, teasing among friends, a comparison of Japanese and American discussion groups, and sociolinguistic interviews, the discourse analysis of framing emerges here as a fruitful new avenue for interaction analysis.

This book discusses current theories in linguistics and sociolinguistics as they relate to therapeutic situations, including uses of metaphor, slogans, and proverbs. It shows how people's empathies or feeling of alienation are displayed by the language they choose to describe or discuss events. Dysfunctions as different as depression, drug and alcohol additions, agoraphobia, schizophrenia and bulimia are examined in terms of the language used by clients or patients. It is shown that the way people encode life events influences their self-evaluations, evaluations of others, and their general behaviour, so that therapy becomes a process of learning to retell one's life story. Every chapter contains either actual narratives from clients or therapist/client interviews with thorough linguistic and sociolinguistic analyses of these speech activities. The therapist is shown how to listen and what to listen for in the client's speech, as well as what kinds of questions to ask.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Introduction -- PART I: Understanding and assessing psychotic phenomena -- 1 Psychotic phenomena: Toward a conceptual understanding of reality testing and disordered thinking -- 2 Assessing disordered thinking and psychotic phenomena -- PART II: Rorschach assessment of psychotic phenomena -- 3 Hermann Rorschach's experiment -- 4 Contributions of Rapaport and Holt -- 5 The Thought Disorder Index -- 6 The Comprehensive System and Rorschach Performance Assessment System -- 7 Alternative Rorschach approaches for assessing disordered thinking -- 8 Integrated model of Rorschach signs of disordered thinking -- PART III: Dimensions of disordered thinking -- 9 Disorganization: Problems in focusing, filtering, and language usage -- 10 Illogicality: Problems in reasoning and logic -- 11 Impoverishment in thinking and language -- 12 Awareness of perceptual and reasoning errors -- PART IV: Differential diagnosis of psychotic phenomena on the Rorschach -- 13 Primary psychoses and the Rorschach -- 14 Secondary psychotic phenomena and the Rorschach -- 15 Malingered psychosis and disordered thinking -- 16 Rorschach indications of psychotic phenomena in children and adolescents -- Final Thoughts: Empirical, conceptual, and practical considerations -- Index

This monograph investigates ways of establishing coherence in the discourse of a thought-disordered patient, by analyzing two interviews - one where the patient is in an acute psychotic state, and the other where the same patient is considered fully recovered.

This present book explores recent advances in modeling discourse processes, in particular, new approaches aimed at understanding pathological language behavior specific to schizophrenia. The contributors examine the modeling paradigm of formal semantics, which falls within the scope of both linguistics and logic while providing overlapping links with other fields such as philosophy of language and cognitive psychology. This book is based on results presented during the series of workshops on (In)Coherence and Discourse organized by SLAM (Schizophrenia and Language: Analysis and Modeling), a project developed to systemize the study of pathological language processing by taking an overarching interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, linguistics, computer science and philosophy. The principle focus is on conversations produced by people with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. The contributions come from young and experienced researchers, and invited speakers. The book appeals to likeminded students and researchers.