Dementia, Rhetorical Schemes, and Cognitive Resilience
Abstract
I argue for the importance of rhetorical schemes for understanding, diagnosing, and coping with forms of dementia. Schemes give salience (recruit attention), memorability (affect storage and facilitate retrieval), and aesthetic effects (induce a pleasurable emotional response) to configurations of language. They do so because of the way they play to neurocognitive pattern biases, like repetition, sequence, and position. Dementia is a condition under which language use degrades, alongside memory and attention, but pattern biases appear to remain and schemic configurations become more and more frequent in dementia speech. Rhetorical schemes, that is, are notably resilient to the forces that diminish language use in dementia.
- Journal
- Poroi
- Published
- 2020-01-07
- DOI
- 10.13008/2151-2957.1301
- CompPile
- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
- Topics
-
- Export
- BibTeX RIS
Citation context
Cited by in this index (0)
No articles in this index cite this work.
References (0)
No references on file for this article.
Related articles
-
Res Rhetorica Oct 2026“Democracy Rebound”: А research agenda to counter contemporary autocratization and authoritarian rhetoric ↗Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
-
Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jun 2026Hype Circulation: Shaping Public Engagement with Emerging Technologies Through Anticipatory Communities and Embodiment ↗Rich Shivener; Jason Tham
-
Journal of Writing Research Jun 2026Reflective orientations and genre navigation in dissertation writing: Insights from seven years of doctoral writing retreats ↗Kathryn Baillargeon
-
Rhetorica Mar 2026Mark Garrett Longaker
-
Written Communication Feb 2026Amy D. Williams; Jonathan Ostenson