Schizophrenic language : the possibility of early detection

Abstract

This research attempts to find out the language and communicative impairments of the patients with schizophrenia so that early detection will be possible through the analysis of the language patterns. It gives an introduction to language dysfunction in schizophrenic patients such as, problems in phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology and so on.Patients suffering from schizophrenia have also been found to be impaired in their pragmatic abilities in the comprehension of figurative language (e.g., metaphors, ironies, proverbs).The thought disorder is considered to be one of the most significant reasons behind their communication impairments. Along with this theory, other theories from Psycholinguistics and Discourse Analysis are used to identify and explain the impairments. This field of research is naturally bordering both psychology and linguistics, but has until now been ignored by most linguists. This paper provides an introduction to schizophrenia and language as an interdisciplinary field of research, as a way of integrating linguistic theory with psychological method.For the empirical data, interviews were conducted. This research study used a qualitative analysis of data addressing change in the production of language as measured by verbal fluency testing, as well as analysis of spontaneous speech of the participants. However, all the psychiatrists, speech therapists and the family members of the patients agreed that the patients with schizophrenia have several kinds of language impairments. They discussed about the patterns of the impairments and how those can be detected. This paper concluded with some of the ways in which the study of schizophrenia may offer new insights into the cognitive and neural architecture of the language system.