Multilingual Life in Dementia Care : Crossing Linguistic Boundaries and Cognitive Gap: Navigating Mutual Understanding

Sammanfattning: This dissertation presents empirical research in the field of multilingual communication in residential homes of people living with dementia.  Prior research has emphasised the crucial function of a common language and culture between care workers and residents in such settings. It has been argued that a shared language is essential for fostering mutual understanding between care workers and residents with dementia. The absence of a common language can result in significant issues, such as creating misconceptions about the capabilities of multilingual residents, potentially preventing care workers from recognising the residents' communicative abilities. This can prevent residents with dementia from participating in social activities, leading to social isolation and negatively impact their well-being. This, in turn, increases costs for all parties involved, including residents, care workers, and residential homes.  While the significance of a shared language for mutual understanding is undeniable, it's not always feasible to match care workers and residents linguistically and culturally in a multilingual society with diverse ethnic groups. This situation prompts questions about how to achieve mutual understanding in the absence of a shared language in residential homes. This dissertation investigates how care workers and residents from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds in dementia care achieve mutual understanding during task-oriented communication, despite the absence of a shared verbal language.  Employing a micro-analytic perspective, this research delves deep into instances of multilingual communication within residential homes to uncover the function of linguistic features such as sound prolongation in task-oriented communication. Additionally, the study explores how forms of address contribute to achieving mutual understanding in dementia care when there's no shared verbal language in multilingual communication. These questions are addressed using data obtained through a combination of ethnography, video recordings, and interviews. The study involves participants, including residents from ethnic minorities displaying symptoms of dementia and care workers from diverse linguistic backgrounds.  Conversation analysis is employed for transcribing and analysing interactions among participants, while thematic analysis is applied to the interview data. The results suggest that in the absence of a common verbal language, participants recycle each other's verbal and nonverbal actions to foster mutual understanding. This process relies heavily on the actions of care workers. The findings also underscore the importance of care workers’ knowledge of residents' life histories, including their preferred forms of address, as a valuable resource for establishing rapport with residents.  In conclusion, this dissertation highlights that the effectiveness of specific linguistic resources in multilingual communication not only varies among individuals but is also contingent on the particular situations in which a resident is involved.