Speech Acts in Chinese Older Adults with Alzheimer’s Disease: A MCGD-based Study

Abstract : In response to the escalating prevalence of aging societies globally, there has been a discernible surge in scholarly interest in the field of gerontolinguistics over the past decades. Numerous investigations have elucidated that an individual’s cognitive decline is discernible in the execution of speech acts during communication. Within this context, speech acts assume a pivotal role as a discerning gauge for assessing pragmatic competence and delineating pragmatic disorders. Employing speech acts as the fundamental analytical unit and incorporating both interlocutor-dependent and contextual factors, this investigation adopts Huang’s (2022) framework for on-site spontaneous speech acts, based on the self-bulit Multimodal Corpus of Gerontic Discourse (MCGD) in China. The study systematically encapsulates the manifestations of pragmatic impairment and corresponding cognitive mechanisms in the on-site spontaneous illocutionary force performances of individuals afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Scrutinizing the findings reveals diverse pragmatic impairment manifestations in AD patients, encompassing answering irrelevantly, incongruities between speech content and objective reality, repetition, infelicity of illocutionary force and etc. These manifestations underscore deficiencies in dimensions such as interdependency, intent recognition, and emotional states concerning speech acts. Notably, these findings align with clinical symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease, including comprised reasoning or judgment, disorders in visual-spatial orientation, and disturbances in emotional regulation. 

Keywords : cognitive impairment; speech act; multimodal; pragmatic competence; illocutionary force

About the lecturer : Prof. Dr. Lihe Huang is Vice-Chair of School Council, Deputy Director of Research Ethics Committee of School of Foreign Languages, General Secretary of Research Center for Ageing, Language and Care, and Deputy Director of Institute of Linguistics and Multimodality in Tongji University. As one of the leading young scholars in the studies of multimodal pragmatics and language and ageing in China, he has published widely and undertaken several research projects granted by different institutions. Lihe Huang is Humboldt Fellow of Germany-based Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Honorary Postgraduate (Research Degree) Supervisor at the University of Liverpool, Visiting Associate Professor at University of Malaya and he conducted research at several world-class universities. He has received several honors and awards both at home and abroad for his academic and teaching performance or social service. 
His current research interest is Gerontolinguistics, i.e. utilizing multifaceted disciplinary approaches to conduct fundamental research on linguistic behavior and cognitive pattern of seniors with dementia in China. He also carries out research and development on early diagnosis, cognitive training, disease management and database construction with the help of Artificial Intelligence technology. His team screens for cognitive impairment and participate in social services, as well as providing think tank suggestions for governments on aging-friendly community construction and aging society management.
He now serves as a referee for several prestigious international journals and holds the membership in the council of some important academic associations both at home and abroad, including China Society of Language and Semiotics, China Pragmatics Association, China Association of Cognitive and Neurolinguistics, Chinese Linguistics Society and China Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics.

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