Memórias e histórias: performances narrativas de mulheres acometidas pela doença de Alzheimer

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the narrative performances of people affected by AD in situations of face-to-face interaction, analyzing what these undertakings demonstrate in terms of identity construction. Inserted in the field of Applied Linguistics, this work has a qualitative character, fundamentally interpretive, using the narrative research approach in the generation of data in open interviews with three participants affected by AD. Aligned to a socioconstructionist conception, we consider the conversational narratives that emerge in face-to-face interactions as the locus of construction of who we are and as a privileged place for people affected by AD to reaffirm themselves and build their identities locally. Combining the concept of co-constructed narrative (OCHS; CAPPS, 2001) with the notion of performance, according to Goffman (1998) and Bauman (1986), we seek to identify how oral narratives are structured, how participants manage their performances in interaction and how they build their identities by means of narratives. Thus, the theoretical constructs indexicality (SILVERSTEIN, 2003), footing (GOFFMAN, 1998) and contextualization clues (GUMPERZ, 1998) make explicit the materiality of the expressive resources for the construction of meanings mobilized by the participants. To this end, our study analyzed five narratives that emerged in the recorded interactions with the participants, in open interviews, that is, without a pre-defined script, in their homes, in order to provide a greater naturalness to the situation and greater comfort to the participants. This analysis was organized based on the model of slides by Biar, Orton and Bastos (2021), by which it is possible to verify: i) the organization of the narratives according to the dimensions proposed by Ochs and Capps (2001); ii) the way people affected by AD handle their performances in interaction; iii) the way people construct their identities by means of narrative. The results of our analysis reveal that the narratives of the participants affected by AD have observable dimensions, as proposed by Ochs and Capps (2001), which reveal the degree of their participation in the interaction, highlighting the essential role that collaboration plays in this context. In addition, it can be seen that the participants make use of different semiotic resources in order to build their narrative performances and, more than that, in order to re-signify experiences and represent themselves to the interlocutor, pointing to identity constructions which reveal their social role.