A bit belated, but here is Claudia’s report on the Atypical Interaction Conference 2019. It was included in the British Aphasiology Society Summer newsletter 2019.
The Atypical Interaction Conference 2019 (AIC 2019) is an event for researchers interested in studying atypical interactions, for instance by using Conversation Analysis. The AIC 2019 took place in Helsinki, Finland from 17 to 19 June 2019. This year’s title of the conference was “Resources and Challenges in Participation”. Participants came from all over the world and presented on a variety of topics, including autism, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), classroom interaction, and aphasia and dementia research. Keynote speakers were Douglas W. Maynard (University of Madison-Wisconsin), talking about concrete competence to inform diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders, Charlotta Plejert (Linköping University), presenting on dementia assessment and care in relation to minority ethnic groups, and Mike Clarke (University College London), showing fascinating examples of interactions involving children with disabilities using AAC, and discussing asymmetry, timing and competence. The abstract booklet can be found here.
Thanks to the BAS Conference Support Fund, I was able to attend this conference, where I presented a poster (“I don’t know” as a resource for turn construction in aphasia) on day 2. The poster focused on a study in which I explored the use of the formulaic expression “I don’t know” in nine speakers with aphasia and their regular conversation partners (CPs). My poster highlighted that the phrase can fulfill a variety of functions in the aphasic group, and that it can help to construct turns in aphasia. The main message of the study is that phrases like “I don’t know” are an important resource for speakers with aphasia, and that they could be considered more regularly in aphasia assessments and therapy. The paper on which this poster was based can be found here.
The AIC 2019 provided a great opportunity to seek views from a multidisciplinary, specialist audience in Conversation Analysis. I received great and thought-provoking feedback on the analysis and got ideas for wider reading. Apart from my poster presentation, I had the chance to listen to and learn from many inspiring talks exploring conversational data across different populations, for instance involving speakers with right-hemisphere damage and frontotemporal dementia. One talk (by Savolainen and Launonen, University of Helsinki) was particularly relevant to my interest in formulaic expressions: pre-stored utterances (building blocks of varying sizes, e.g. single words, word combinations like “I need” or whole sentences) in speech generating devices can help to maintain the flow of a conversation (i.e., temporal advantage compared to regular AAC use). Finally, attending the AIC 2019 was also an excellent opportunity to network, as I am interested in pursuing the interactional linguistics angle on formulaic expressions in my future work.
The conference twitter account (@2019Atypical) and the hashtag #Atypical2019 give an overview of the conference highlights (watch out for the traditional Finnish dance Letkis!). The next AIC in 2022 will take place at Newcastle University.
- Claudia