Reported speech in dementia: Pragmatic patterns in Spanish and Galician natural discourse

Reported speech has been studied in both children and healthy adults. However, it remains a pending issue in the field of Clinical Pragmatics. Regarding adults with dementia, previous studies pointed out that reported speech in individuals with dementia appears almost exclusively as direct speech, while indirect speech arises only occasionally in the form of metaphors or irony. This study has the following objectives: (i) to observe and begin to characterize how the ability to efficiently use reported speech in any type of discourse can deteriorate as cognitive decline progresses in dementia; (ii) to compare whether reported speech patterns vary when people with dementia construct narratives across different genres; and (iii) to examine whether reported speech is employed in dementia discourse as a compensatory strategy to avoid trouble sources. To this end, an oral corpus of 27 video recordings was compiled, featuring individuals at different stages of the disease. The results indicate a systematic decline in both the frequency and structural complexity of RS. Direct speech is the most common form of RS across all stages. Cognitive impairment leads to a more echoic discourse and an increased number of pronouns with unclear referents; in addition, RS representations shift from being diverse to involving only participants present in the communicative context of the task. Discourse genre affects the rate of RS production, which appears more frequently in naturalistic tasks. • Reported speech declines in frequency and complexity as dementia progresses. • Moderate dementia involves compensatory uses of vague pronouns or onomatopoeia. • Gestures decrease in later stages, limiting compensatory enactment strategies. • Severe dementia restricts reported speech to present participants only. • Naturalistic discourse tasks elicit more reported speech than other genres.