University of Arkansas, College of Education and Health Professions
DEPARTMENT OF REHABILITATION HUMAN RESOURCES AND
COMMUNICATION DISORDERS
I.
Program Affiliation:
Communication Disorders
Course Number and Title:
CDIS 5132: DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
AND TREATMENT
Catalog Description: Study of discourse behaviors and discourse analysis procedures
appropriate for communicatively disordered children and adults, along with review of
management approaches associated with impaired discourse performance.
Prerequisites: Previous course work in language processes and disorders.
Professors:
Barbara B. Shadden, Ph.D.
II.
Relationship to Knowledge Base: ADVANCED LEVEL, SPECIALTY STUDIES.
This course provides a detailed examination of discourse analysis techniques and their
application to a wide range of clinical populations. It presumes considerable BASIC
knowledge.
III.
Goals:
CDIS 5132 is designed to:
1. familiarize the student with the nature of discourse behavior, the range of discourse
tasks and behaviors, as well as the types of discourse analyses that can be performed;
2. provide the student with a knowledge base for understanding and differentiating the
discourse behaviors of normal and communicatively disordered children and adults, with
emphasis upon adults;
3. present the student with the tools necessary to develop and implement an appropriate
discourse intervention.
IV.
Competencies
Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:
a. identify at least five different types of discourse tasks and describe their similarities
and differences in terms of cognitive and linguistic challenges; (SP 1, 4)
b. define the discourse characteristics of different clinical populations and differentiate
normal from disordered discourse behaviors; (SP 1,4)
c. obtain a discourse sample from a client and transcribe and segment it appropriately
and accurately; (SP 1,2,3,4)
d. perform all discourse analyses presented in class with accuracy, and interpret analysis
results correctly; (SP 1,2,4)
e. explain the nature and use of at least one discourse analysis procedure for children (SP
1,2,4,7)
f. develop treatment goals and define treatment procedures for at least one client
demonstrating deficits in discourse performance. (SP 1,2,4,6)
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V.
Content
I. The Pragmatic Framework for Understanding Discourse
READ: Roth and Spekman, I and II
II. Types of Discourse
A. Narrative
B. Procedural
C. Expository
D. Conversational
E. Other
READ:
Text, Chapter 1
III. Dimensions of Analysis
IV. Discourse Characteristics of Adult Populations in particular
A. Normal Elderly
B. Individuals with Dementia
C. Aphasic Individuals
D. Right-Hemisphere Impaired Clients
E. Traumatically Brain Injured Adults
READ:
Patient transcripts
V. Discourse Task Variability
A. Task Variables
1. Stimulus
a. Modality
b. Linguistic specificity
c. Complexity
d. Shared reference
2. Overall cognitive complexity
a. Memory demands
b. Sequencing demands
c. Organizational demands (micro, macro, and superstructural)
3. Task constraint vs. open-endedness
4. Instructions
5. Personal relevance
6. Syntactic structure dependence on task
7. Susceptibility to verbal disruption
B. Accuracy/complexity trade-offs
READ:
Text, Chapter 2
VI. Selecting the Discourse Corpus
READ:
Text, Chapter 2
VII. Transcribing and Editing Discourse Samples
A. Transcription options
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B. T-Unit analyses
C. Word counts and other editing procedures
READ:
Text, Chapter 2
VIII. Sentential Level Analyses -- Syntactic Length, Complexity, Diversity, Completeness
A. Hunt's analyses
B. Computerized syntactic analyses
C. Roberts and Wertz' measure of syntactic well-formedness
D. Shadden shortcut to analysis of syntactic accuracy and completeness
E. Other
READ:
Text, Chapter 3
IX. Sentential Level Analyses -- Semantic Structure, Diversity, and Accuracy
A. Type Token Ratio and related measures
B. Word choice and lexical pitch
C. Retherford, Schwartz, and Chapman's semantic roles
D. Roberts and Wertz' semantic accuracy
READ:
Text, Chapter 3
X. Sentential Level Analyses -- Verbal Fragmentation
A. Disfluencies
B. Glosser, Wiener, & Kaplan's analyses of verbal fragmentation
C. Nicholas et al.'s analyses of empty speech
D. Walker, Roberts, and Hedrick's interruptive behaviors
E. German and Simon's word retrieval indices
READ:
Text, Chapter 3
XI. Information Communicated
A. Theoretical considerations -- a priori vs. a posteriori measures, and other issues
B. Amount of Information
C. Quality of Information
D. Efficiency or Conciseness of Information Communicated
READ:
Text, Chapter 5
XII. Cohesion and Coherence
A. Hedberg and Stoel-Gammon's modification of Halliday and Hasan's cohesive tie and
cohesive tie attempt measures
B. Liles' guidelines for cohesion analysis based on H and H
C. Strong and Shaver's application of a limited cohesion analysis
D. Coherence
E. Cohesive harmony (Armstrong)
READ:
Text, Chapter 4
XIII. Macro- and Super-structural Analyses
A. Narrative vs. procedural discourse
B. Essential and optional steps and targets in procedures
C. Story grammar and the episode structure
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D. Macrostructural elements of moral, gist, title, outline, summary, etc.
READ:
Text, Chapter 6
REVIEW:
Children’s story grammar approaches in this area
XIV. Conversational Analyses
A. Nature and appropriateness of turns
B. Turn-taking
C. Topic initiation and maintenance
D. Conversational repair
E. Speech acts
READ:
Text, Chapter 7
Roth & Spekman again
Packet materials
XV. Discourse Interventions
READ: Packet
VI.
Evaluation:
1. Readings: Complete all reading assignments on time in preparation for class discussion.
2. Obtaining a Sample: You will obtain a discourse sample set from a “normal” adult (or a
client, if there aren’t many intelligibility problems). The sample will include: Cookie Theft
picture description, 2 procedural discourse samples (scrambled eggs, changing a light bulb), a
story retelling sample, and a conversational sample. These samples will be transcribed and
submitted without further formal analyses. However, you must give your impressions of the
person’s discourse, based solely on the types of analyses you heard about so far. The process of
eliciting a sample will be discussed in class. This project will be worth 5% of your final grade.
3. Practice Transcript Editing and Analyses. I have a videotape of Mrs. G. – a client we will be
working with all summer session. We will watch the video, but I then want you to transcribe the
Cookie Theft, Lady Story, and Conversation sections of sample. Those will be submitted, and I
will then provide you with “correct” transcripts for future work. The Cookie Theft and Story
Retelling samples should be broken into T-units and the sample should be formatted for use in
subsequent analysis. All samples will be used in class for practice of analysis procedures. On
various samples (mostly from Mrs. G.), you will be asked to practice analysis techniques which
will be turned in to me for “grading.” Grading will be based on a rubric which emphasizes
accuracy, completeness, consistency, etc. of your efforts. Getting things “right” no more
important than putting forward your best effort to apply the analysis technique and be consistent
and thoughtful in doing so. All together, this will be worth around 25% of your final grade.
4. Making Appropriate Analysis Decisions: You will be given samples from three clients and
will be asked to read the samples carefully and determine which three specific analysis
procedures you would use (and why) in order to obtain the best possible information about this
person's discourse performance as a baseline for treatment. This project will be worth 20% of
your final grade.
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5. Final Project: Assessment Protocols for Children’s Discourse Behaviors. Since this class has
focused on discourse measures with adult population, the final project will provide everyone with
the materials they need to assess discourse performance in children as well. Basically, you will
be asked to read a chapter/article and prepare a summary of the discourse analysis approach,
target populations and age groups, as well as sample instructions and scoring sheets. Further
information is presented in packet. The final project will be worth about 10% of your grade. All
projects must be completed and ready for presentation by Wednesday, August 6. We will
probably be holding class five days that week, so presentations will be on Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday.
5. Tests: There will be two in-class examinations during the session. The examinations will be
objective/short answer tests covering all forms of discourse analysis, as well as theory and
practical issues. The intent of each test is to ensure that you know the basic discourse analysis
domains, issues in selecting and analyzing discourse tasks, and the nature of various discourse
analysis procedures and what information they provide. Test 1 covers Sections I through X; Test
2 covers Sections XI through XIV. The two tests are worth 40% of your course grade.
VII.
Syllabus Change
The instructor reserves the right to make changes as necessary to this syllabus. If changes
are made, advance notification will be given to the class.
VIII. Grading Scale
A = 90-100%
B = 80-89.9%
C = 70-79.9%
D = 60-69.9%
F = below 60%
IX.
Academic Honesty
The application of the University of Arkansas Academic Honesty Policy, as stated in the
Student Handbook, will be fully adhered to in this course. Grades and degrees earned by
dishonest means devalue those earned by all students; therefore, it is important that
students are aware of the University of Arkansas Academic Honesty Policy. Academic
dishonesty involves acts which may subvert or compromise the integrity of the
educational process.
X.
Accommodations
Students with disabilities requesting reasonable accommodations must first register with
the Center for Students with Disabilities. The CSD is located in the Arkansas Union,
room 104 and on the web at http://www.uark.edu/ua/csd/applications.htm. The CSD
provides documentation to students with disabilities, who must then provide this
documentation to their course instructors. Students with disabilities should notify their
course instructors of their need for reasonable accommodations in a timely manner to
ensure sufficient time to arrange reasonable accommodation implementation and
effectiveness. A typical time frame for arranging reasonable accommodations for
students who are registered with the CSD is approximately one to two weeks.
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XI.
Classroom Behaviors
Appropriate classroom behavior is expected of the instructor and all students.
Inappropriate and disruptive classroom behavior (inappropriate language and gestures,
class disruptions, disrespect to other students or instructor, and other behavior as
determined by the instructor) will not be tolerated and will result in possible removal
from class and/or disciplinary action as per the student handbook.
INCLEMENT WEATHER
In case of inclement weather, students are advised to call 575-4917, where I will leave a voice
mail message about classes. In general, if Fayetteville Public Schools are closed, I will be
canceling class. However, under no circumstances do I want any student to take unnecessary
risks traveling in inclement weather. No student will be penalized for missing class on inclement
weather days.
University closing announcements are made on KUAF Radio 91.3, as well as local radio and
television stations. The University’s inclement weather site is updated frequently on both
UARKINFO and University Online at http://pigtrail.uark.edu/info/weather.nclk.
XII.
Course Resources
A. University Library
B. Professor's Library
C. Speech and Hearing Clinic Library
D. Selected videotapes and support materials
XIII. Research Base:
Required Texts:



Cherney, L R., Shadden, B. B., Coelho, C. A. (1998).
communicatively impaired adults. Gathersburg, MD: Aspen.
Packet
Articles in clinic
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Analyzing discourse in
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