Semantics and Pragmatics in the Language of a Patient withSchizophrenia

Abstract

Thanks to widely used neuroimaging techniques, it is now known that alterations in the cerebral cortex cause speech and thought processing difficulties in individuals with schizophrenia. These difficulties are clearly increased by the dysfunction found in dopamine markers and in glutamate transmission, so that the schizophrenic's speech is described as tangential, illogical and incoherent and most scientists believe that it is based on the deprivation of logical-argumentative connections. While it is true that narrative-conceptual disorganization is irrefutable, it is equally true, however, that by reexamining schizophrenic semantics according to an organic and systemic criterion, it is possible to demonstrate that their linguistic code, besides being accessible, possesses certain precise characteristics: contradiction, metonymic identification between narrator-identity and object-entity, and anaphoric recovery. Even if these characteristics are not sufficient to generate a profile of linguistic cooperation, the analyst can use them to delimit the patient's dimension. Therefore, we aim to show that the linguistic sign is not at all devoid of transparency, as people often say: it must be interpreted systemically
and phenomenologically, not according to common expectation.