Cohesive Properties in the Discourse of Persian-speaking with Transcortical Motor Aphasia

Background: Although discourse properties of aphasic patients have been investigated utilizing microlinguistic as well as macrolinguistic approaches, there have been only a few studies in the Persian setting which have tried to investigate discourse properties of these brain-damaged patients. Previous researchers have concentrated mainly on the two most notorious types of aphasia, namely Broca and Wernicke. Thus, the coherence properties of transcortical motor patients have never been given serious consideration by scientists. The current study aimed to investigate whether and how transcortical aphasia patients differ from their healthy counterparts in the cohesive properties of their discourse with the aim of presenting an exhaustive account of the issue and filling the gap existing in the literature. Methods: In doing so, via mixed-methods approach, cohesive devices in the discourse of six transcortical motor aphasics (3 participants of each gender, mean age, 56.9 years) and 6 healthy non-aphasic controls (3 participants of each gender, mean age=57.4 years) were compared. Results: The results corroborate our hypotheses that the discourse of transcortical aphasics is less cohesive than that of healthy individuals, and they have lots of challenges in constructing grammatically cohesive devices. Conclusion: The findings further demonstrate that discourse could be differently disrupted in diverse forms of aphasia. It is recommended that more research be conducted on different languages so as to shed more light on the issue, enriching our understanding of the nature of this disease.