Alzheimer’s Patients Other Than Themselves and Their Loved Ones: Circularity as Evil and Regularity as Remedy

Christophe Cusimano, Kristýna Vítková

Abstract


Any caregiver who has to face the discursive and gestural repetitions of Alzheimer’s patients must nevertheless set up a daily schedule routine. This apparent paradox brings together circularity on the one hand and regularity on the other, two principles based on the same axiom: iteration. Iteration can cause the patient to be locked up within himself when it takes the shape of circularity, whereas it can be beneficial when it takes the form of a reassuring regularity. The latter removes, at least temporarily, the threat of a dual break of the patient, from himself and from his friends and family. In this article, we consider iteration from two angles, linguistic and behavioural.


Keywords


Alzheimer's disease; memory; repetition; regularity; iteration; semantics; speech analysis

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/lsmll.2021.45.4.79-88
Date of publication: 2022-01-21 08:45:01
Date of submission: 2021-04-20 19:55:38


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