?
Telling a Story or Describing a Picture: Cognitive Differences and Similarities across Aphasic and Healthy Speakers
Storytelling is one of the most important linguistic functions. «Our interest in telling and hearing stories is strongly related to the nature of intelligence» (Schank 1995, xliv). How exactly people tell stories, what discourse strategies they use, and what degree of the communicative success they achieve in doing this can relate a lot about their mental states, the way they handle information, personal experiences and memories. Storytelling routines are both cognitively and socioculturally determined.
In this paper we look at storytelling strategies in aphasic speakers because of the extreme importance of the data on spontaneous speech impairment. It is important both for a better understanding of aphasia, and also for delineating storytelling strategies of healthy speakers.