Abstract

GALLARDO, Beatriz. Linguistic Pragmatic skills in patients with Williams Syndrome. Revista de Investigación [online]. 2010, vol.34, n.70, pp.85-108. ISSN 1010-2914.

Traditionally, linguistic description of patients with Williams Syndrome has repeatedly highlighted the fact that they present an outstanding social and verbal ability (specially regarding the use of lexical items), which contrasted with the mental handicap normally associated with such condition; yet, the adoption of Linguistic Pragmatic approaches used in clinic linguistics has shown that speakers with Williams Syndrome presented important limitations within his context. In this research, in order to achieve a thorough description of this handicap, we include the results obtained from the application of two kinds of protocols: the PerLA profile (descriptive-qualitative in essence) and PREP-INIA (which allows for a quantitative evaluation) to the transcriptions of 6 WS patients’ oral performances.

Keywords : Pragmatics; acts of speech; conversational maxims; pragmatic evaluation; Williams’s syndrome.