The New Age of Communication Research: Discourse, Cognition and Behaviour

Research into communication disorders has been undergoing a slow revolution over the past few decades with some fascinating advances and some exciting new directions ahead. The major change in emphasis that has emerged is an interest in assessing communication as this relates to real-life everyday type situations. In particular, three major thrusts can be identified. The first is the application of socially relevant linguistic theory to communication disorders. Thus, theorists such as Halliday have provided useful frameworks for identifying patterns in discourse. In turn, these have revealed the strengths and weakness of speakers with aphasia or other communication disorders (e.g., traumatic brain injuries) and also what their conversational partners do to help or hinder this process. The second is an examination of how cognitive processes, including memory, inferential reasoning and social cognition, contribute to communicative competence in people who have communication disorders but not aphasia, such as those with Alzheimer's disease, with traumatic brain injuries and with right hemisphere lesions. The third is the adoption of a more integrated approach, whereby verbal and nonverbal behaviours are examined in detail for their communicative meaning, for both the purposes of characterising communication breakdown and for developing an integrated treatment approach.