Communicative action with dementing people: loss and development of communication power of dementing people and their caregivers in the domestic setting

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jo Reichertz
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 377411265

For 2/3 of all dementing persons the domestic setting is the main location for care, treatment and support. These activities and coordinating processes take place by means of communicative actions. Neither everyday problems of reciprocal cooperation and coordination between dementing persons and their relatives, nor the ways in which the interactants deal with them communicatively in their domestic setting have been focused on. This project aims to close this research gap by pursuing the following three questions:1.) How are communicative actions between dementing persons and their relatives practically performed in the domestic setting, with special regard to the reciprocal effects, and why do communicative actions enable a co-orientation between the individuals?2.) Is dementia causing the loss of communication power (Reichertz 2009) of both the relatives and the patients? If so, how can this communication power possibly be reconstructed under the conditions of the dementia from an everyday strategic perspective?3.) Which social figurative patterns (Elias 1997) do emerge from the communicatively obtained adjustment to each other as a basis for everyday strategic cooperation and coordination processes?These three questions shall be answered by (a) participatory observations within the domestic setting, containing treatment and care, (b) by focused videography of selected situations as well as (c) by generating narrative interviews with reference persons of the dementia patients..

• DFG Programme: Research Grants