UCLA

This study investigates five types of disorganized speech as defined in the psychiatric literature in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia through ethnographic and conversation-analytic methods. Data analyzed for this research have been taken from a video ethnography study investigating the ecological validity of participants' functioning and neurocognitive assessments (Bromley et al., 2012a; Bromley et al., 2012b). Results of this research highlight (a) the difference in analytical privilege between analysts and interlocutors; (b) the distributed, rather than individual, responsibility of managing the consequences of disorganized speech; (c) the way in which face-management takes precedence over mutual understanding of talk and d) the way in which communicative breakdowns are not conversational endpoints. Social skill interventions geared towards behavioral transfer to real-world settings can benefit from an understanding of the interactional resources underlying face-to-face interaction.