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10 - ‘You Know This Better’

Interactional Challenges for Couples Living with Dementia when the Epistemic Status Regarding Shared Past Events Is Uncertain

from Part 4 - Dementia and Epistemics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2024

By
Anna Ekström ,
Elin Nilsson  and
Ali Reza Majlesi
Edited by
Peter Muntigl ,
Charlotta Plejert  and
Danielle Jones
Peter Muntigl
Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium
Charlotta Plejert
Affiliation:
Linköpings Universitet, Sweden
Danielle Jones
Affiliation:
University of Bradford
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Summary

In this chapter, we investigate how a couple where one of the spouses is diagnosed with dementia handle challenges in narrations of past shared events that arise when the spouse with dementia has limited access to these events. Partners of people diagnosed with dementia recurrently have to take into consideration that their spouse may not remember details in stories they tell, even though the person with dementia is a main participant in the events being retold. The design of such stories is complex as the interactants must keep track of both the content of the story and manage the potential sensitivity of telling a story that should already be known to both spouses. We show how the spouse without dementia (re)organizes the participation framework in resourceful ways and delicately deals with her spouse’s limited memory using a variety of face-saving practices. The analyses highlight how issues related to knowledge and dementia can benefit from using an interactional and distributed perspective. While access and rights to knowledge is usually divided between participants depending on the knowledge domain and the participants’ relation to the topic, in the case of a dementia disease a more flexible approach towards such divisions could be advantageous.

Keywords

joint storytellingdistributed perspectiveparticipation frameworkunclear epistemic statusface-saving practices
Type
Chapter
Information
Dementia and Language
The Lived Experience in Interaction
 , pp. 226 - 248
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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