"Dyna beth sydd yn fy nghalon": Linguistic Identity and Aphasia in a Minority Language Context.

Abstract

Aphasia is an impairment of language caused by damage to the brain that affects people's ability to produce or comprehend speech and can affect reading and writing. There is little research about the experiences of bilingual or multilingual people with aphasia, despite their language profiles being both uniquely individual and differentially affected by the condition. This paper describes a study that used interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to understand more about the experiences of people who have aphasia and who speak Welsh-a legally recognized yet minority, national language. The study was conducted by two speech and language therapists-one who is a post-doctoral researcher and the other who is a bilingual Welsh-speaker. Their positionality and skillset were integral to the conduct of the study. Three bilingual Welsh-speakers with post-stroke aphasia were interviewed. Analysis of their data was informed by IPA, approached through a dialogic theoretical lens. The analytic method provided deep and rich insights into the complex political, cultural, and heritage influences on the experiences of Welsh-speakers with aphasia. The findings provide novel contributions to the literature concerning the multifaceted impact of aphasia on bilingual individuals, with implications for both bilingual qualitative research and rehabilitation practices.