Pragmatic investigation of the language of Schizophrenics

Abstract

Jonathan Fine posits that there is a widespread understanding among psychiatric clinicians that languageis integral to the diagnosis and treatment of many psychiatric disorders. Yet clinicians may lack a language to talk about language, which limits them to the application of linguistic intuitions in their assessment of mental illness (37). It is against this backdrop that the present study aims to investigate the language of schizophrenics from the point of view of pragmatics- language in use. One of the specific objectives is to subject clinical data to existing pragmatic principles and theories in order to ascertain the viability of such pragmatic tools. The study collects data qualitatively from two schizophrenic patients at the Jos University Teaching Hospital,after obtaining an ethical clearance and by purposive sampling, draws utterances that serve as data for the analysis. The work adopts speech act theory as its theoretical framework The research found that since schizophrenia is highly characterized by disordered thought patterns which reflects in actual conversation, the phenomenon becomes highly problematic as intention attribution is hampered. The study concludes that, for a better understanding of the language use of schizophrenics and its implication for pragmatic studies, interlocutors must devise means by which they can share in the context of the schizophrenics and their unique worldview. This study is significant as it adopts an interdisciplinary approach to further open up the dialogue between medicine and the humanities.