Silence in Aphasia

Abstract

Identifying silence in the language of people with aphasia is the first objective that drives the writing of this thesis. More specifically, the aim of this work is to describe silence, and if possible, typify it as part of an alternative system of meaning. It is believed that silence is a window to promote a new path for language reorganization for people with aphasia. By considering the reappropriation of the subject's history, and the resumption of this construction, Discursive Neurolinguistics supports this research theoretically and methodologically. Language is not the history of man, but it constructs this history (Franchi; Fiorin; Ilari, 2011, p. 11). Silence is language, even in aphasia. It carries meanings, substantiates said and unsaid. To validate the hypothesis that silence is part of an alternative process of meaning, data and analyzes extracted from longitudinal follow-up records of two aphasic subjects are presented. Thus, as a conclusion of this research, we contribute to a new look at the subject with aphasia, who, despite the language disorder, is still a subject. Thus, the aphasic person is constituted in language, and is constituted by it, whether in verbal or non-verbal manifestation.