Dialogic analysis of five patients with fluent aphasia

This paper is qualitative research which analyzes and compares the discursive characteristics of five patients with fluent aphasia in a hospital in El Callao, Peru. An adapted version of the Boston test was applied, and spontaneous conversations were recorded or filmed. It was concluded that patients with fluent aphasia showed difficulty in naming objects. Although all of them showed communicative intention, those with Wernicke’s aphasia are more monologic. This group does not retain the ability to repeat; they understand simple and concrete logical-semantic relations, but not within narratives, and their linguistic production also shows alterations in this last aspect, since they present agrammatism. In contrast, patients with sensory transcortical aphasia do achieve repetitions; they understand only logical-semantic relations within short stories, and produce many neologisms and little agrammatism. Finally, Quechua-Spanish bilingual patients with aphasia of different types are more diverse in their speech acts than monolingual patients.