6.1 Introduction
This chapter is a case study of Dan, a man with vascular dementia who sings in everyday conversations with his family. Dan lives at home with his wife, Morgan, and she is his primary conversational partner. After changes in cognition, Dan began singing during conversation-based activities that did not have music as a focal point (e.g., music therapy or music as a topic of conversation). Some of Dan’s singing maintains cohesion with prior talk when the song shares words with the previous turn. For example, a turn at talk that incidentally includes a song’s title or lyrics might touch off his singing of that song. Dan also does something very interesting, creative, and unexpected by modifying lyrics. His modifications, which are based on prior talk and the physical environment, are the main focus of this chapter.
Dan’s singing uses elements from a prior speaker’s turn or objects in his immediate surroundings to modify lyrics from a small repertoire of songs. For example, Dan often changes the lyrics “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true. I’m half crazy over the love of you” from the song “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)” (Dacre, 1892/Reference Dacre1925). In Extract 1, Dan sings this song with altered lyrics during a meal with Morgan.
Extract 1 5-2014 – DA=Dan; MO=Morgan
01 DA: I’m slowing down Morgan. (0.5) getting full. 02 MO: Mmm? 03 (9.1) 04 Well you’ve attacked that with gusto. 05 DA: Mm hih heh 06 (4.6) 07 ((singing modified “Bicycle Built for Two”)) 08 ♫ Gusto gusto give me your answer true 09 (1.3) 10 MO: Mmhmm 11 (5.5) 12 DA: ♫ I’m half crazy over eating with you {looks to Morgan} 13 (1.7) 14 MO: Well that’s very kind of you
Dan’s singing in line 8 replaces the original lyrics “Daisy Daisy” with Morgan’s gusto (line 4). He continues with the meal theme by changing “the love of you” to eating with you (line 12), and Morgan treats his singing as a compliment by expressing appreciation (line 14) (see Pomerantz (Reference Pomerantz and Schenkein1978) on compliment responses). This example is representative of how Dan creates new songs in the corpus. His singing is responsive to prior talk, accomplishes a wide range of interactional jobs (such as complimenting, complaining, and requesting) while often being humorous as well, and makes relevant a co-participant response. Furthermore, his singing is a remarkable cognitive and creative achievement. His songs maintain the original tune and some of the lyrical elements (e.g., syllabic structure and rhyme) while he simultaneously fashions novel lyrics that carry the new theme.
Musical recognition and memory may be spared in dementia despite impaired language (Cuddy & Duffin, Reference Cuddy and Duffin2005; Särkämö et al., Reference Särkämö, Laitinen, Tervaniemi, Numminen, Kurki and Rantanen2012). Research into music-based interventions has rapidly grown in the hopes that capitalizing on remaining musical abilities could provide an inexpensive, easy, and enjoyable non-pharmacological treatment approach. The most robust research on dementia and singing outside of testing situations and imaging studies is on singing in the context of music therapy, recreation, and caregiving situations. The literature can roughly be divided into informal singing done by caregivers and formal singing programs led by music professionals and therapists. In a review of the studies, Chatterton et al. (Reference Chatterton, Baker and Morgan2010) compared the qualifications of the singers and their goals. They concluded that music therapists and caregivers use singing to different ends. Music therapists were interested in addressing cognitive, social, and behavioral functioning. In contrast, caregivers were attempting to reduce agitation, improve quality of life, and build connections especially during specific tasks (e.g., morning routines and meals). The findings of these research areas have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere (see e.g., Leggieri et al. (Reference Leggieri, Thaut, Fornazzari, Schweizer, Barfett, Munoz and Fischer2019) for a systematic review of research on music interventions and Swall et al. (Reference Swall, Hammar and Gransjön Craftman2020) for a summary of singing by caregivers). It is worth noting that while there is general agreement that music‐based interventions reduce depressive and behavioral symptoms for people with dementia, it remains undetermined whether benefits extend to cognition and how they may relate to changes in the brain.
Compared to research on singing facilitated by music professionals or done by caregivers, unprompted singing by people with dementia has received less attention. Singing initiated by people with dementia has a history of being classified as noise-making and verbal disruptive behavior associated with self-stimulation (Cohen-Mansfield & Werner, Reference Cohen-Mansfield and Werner1997; Ryan et al., Reference Ryan, Tainsh, Kolodny, Lendrum and Fisher1988). Although some typologies of disruptive vocalizations note that they may be goal-directed (e.g., requests for attention), this type of top-down analysis risks erasure of contextual nuances that indicate why a person vocalizes at a particular juncture in time and the role of co-participants. More recently, Hydén (Reference Hydén2011) and Samuelsson and Hydén (Reference Samuelsson and Hydén2011) analyzed non-verbal vocalizations produced by people with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease (e.g., screaming, repeated syllables, “singing-like” and monotonous pitch contours) to understand how co-participants orient to noise-making as meaningful communication. Their approach is in contrast to previous typologies that treat non-verbal vocalizations as an asocial expression of agitation or other inner states. Hydén also demonstrates the necessity of analyzing discursive context for understanding non-verbal vocalizations as being part of a repeated caring practice. This interactional approach to non-verbal vocalizations provides a model for how singing by people with dementia in everyday conversation could be analyzed. Indeed, Rasmussen (Reference Rasmussen, Wilkinson, Rae and Rasmussen2020) analyzes the interactional environment in which a person living with frontotemporal dementia sings during the course of a conversation. The songs are positioned when the topic of talk is atrophying, and they are designed to be associated with prosodic features and words from the co-participant’s earlier speaking turns.
Like the two examples described by Rasmussen, Dan’s singing is more obviously directed at mutual engagement than the “loud singing” or “variety of tunes” included in classifications of disruptive vocalizations. However, Dan’s frequent singing of a small set of songs could be described as an atypical, repetitive behavior using a clinical typology. This chapter shows that a bottom-up approach allows for a finer-grained description of the emergent structure and meaning of his singing. An analysis of how singing unfolds in interaction demonstrates that his songs can be quite the opposite of self-stimulation in their recipient design. Developing our understanding of how Dan uses singing as a semiotic resource for action formation and identity construction is especially important for a population in which loss of memory can be ideologically associated with incompetence and loss of self.
6.2 Data and Methodology
The data are home videos recorded by Morgan between September 2011 and December 2014. Morgan and Dan volunteered the recordings for use in my dissertation and subsequent publications. They also granted me access to Dan’s cognitive-linguistic testing report and permission to summarize the results. The testing scores, along with background information provided by Morgan regarding Dan’s changes in behavior, provide an important context for his singing. The University of Colorado Human Research Institutional Review Board approved the study (protocol 14‑0109), and both participants provided verbal and written consent. I changed the participants’ names, all names mentioned in the data, and some locations to protect the participants’ privacy.
I took a micro-level approach using Conversation Analysis to analyze Dan’s singing and co-participant responses in the context of unfolding interaction. I reviewed 23.25 hours of video and transcribed 39 segments with singing. I used transcription conventions from Jefferson (Reference Jefferson and Lerner2004) as a basis and added a musical note symbol (♫) to mark singing, following the notation used by Stevanovic (Reference Stevanovic2012). As I am not analyzing Dan’s performances for elements contained in musical notation, I have not included musical scores for each transcript. Detailed transcripts can be found in Foster (Reference Foster2015) as not all of the extracts from the corpus are discussed in this chapter.
6.3 Participants
Dan and Morgan live independently in their home in the USA. Morgan immigrated as an adult from the UK, and they have lived in the same house since getting married in the 1960s. At the time of the first recording, Dan was 76 years old and Morgan was 70. In 2007 Dan had an abrupt change in cognition and was later diagnosed with vascular dementia. Cognitive-linguistic testing indicates that he has severely impaired short-term memory, in the less than 1st percentile. The severity of his short-term memory loss impairs his ability to complete daily tasks despite other scores falling within normal limits (including attention, processing speed, conceptualization, auditory comprehension, expressive language, and reading comprehension). Dan’s decline in cognition significantly impacts his life. He does not complete higher-level tasks (instrumental activities of daily living or IADLs) in any form. This means that he is wholly dependent for financial and medicine management, shopping, housework, cooking, social planning, driving, and so on. Some of Dan’s basic routine activities (ADLs such as dressing) require assistance as well. Morgan provides Dan with assistance and cues to initiate and complete them, and he would not be able to live at home without her.
Dan also experienced major changes in communication. In groups and interactions outside the home, his participation is often limited to repetitive formulaic sequences, questions, and positive evaluations of objects in his surroundings (e.g., multiple productions of those flowers are really beautiful). Dan communicates more effectively in a dyad in a lower-stimulus and familiar environment such as his home. In these less demanding contexts, Dan still repeats topics and utterances, but he communicates with a wider range of resources (disagreeing, evaluating, inquiring, providing accounts, etc.) While this study does not go into detail about all of Dan’s verbal abilities, it is important to recognize that he has resources for participation besides just singing. That is not to say that Dan’s communication is unaffected by cognitive decline. It is, however, important to start an investigation into his singing by acknowledging that he has many other verbal resources for participation.
In many of the extracts, Dan appears exceptionally competent. This is in part because the extracts are removed from their larger discursive context. A five-minute clip may seem relatively “normal” when it is extracted from a two-hour recording and not viewed in the context of interactions from previous days. It is readily apparent from viewing interactions across a wider time frame that Dan’s communication becomes negatively impacted by memory impairment, even in the home. While he may not have severe word-finding deficits or syntactic impairment, it is not unusual for him to repeat utterances multiple times during a single recording or across days. In many of the videos Dan repeatedly asks questions about temporal orientation or his children’s life circumstances – information that has not changed in many years. He also denies that he has the memory to answer questions about his experiences in the immediate and distant past that one might expect to be in his domain of knowledge. It is clear that Dan has both deficits and remaining abilities, and this pattern of pragmatic ability and disability in the absence of other significant linguistic impairment is common in dementia. What is less typical is Dan’s creative use of singing.
6.4 Background on Dan’s Singing
Dan does not have professional training in music but enjoys listening to it. He started singing in conversation after changes in his cognition. Dan certainly sang before dementia, and he often sang to his children. Yet there is a difference in his earlier singing and how he uses it now as an interactional resource. His earlier singing is what one might expect from someone who sings around the house outside of primarily talking-based activities. It was only after changes in his cognition that family members noticed he would frequently repeat verses of songs in conversation, and over time he increasingly began to modify lyrics based on prior utterances. Dan’s conversational use of singing was well established by the start of this study, and there is no discernible change or development in his singing patterns over the course of the recordings.
Dan has a limited repertoire and audience for his singing. He sings a fairly small set of songs that he learned in childhood and college. The nine songs that Dan sings in the data are as follows:
1. “Bicycle Built for Two” a.k.a. “Daisy Bell” (Dacre, 1892/Reference Dacre1925)
2. “The Farmer in the Dell”
3. “The Fireman’s Band” a.k.a. “The Life of a Fireman”
4. “I’ve Got Sixpence”
5. “Kansas City” (Rodgers & Hammerstein II, Reference Rodgers and Hammerstein1943)
6. “Old MacDonald”
7. “R.P.I. was R.P.I. When Union Was a Pup”
8. “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain”
9. “There’s a Meeting Here Tonight”
These songs belong to several genres: musicals, college or drinking songs, children’s songs, and old popular or folk songs. The lyrics, along with musical scores and publicly available recordings, can be accessed online (www.roy-foster.com). Importantly, Dan only sings with immediate family members. This means that his singing is not a form of disinhibition, perseveration, or a simple stimulus response. He is sensitive to context in terms of both conversation partner and prior discourse. The fact that Dan does not sing with some people and that he changes lyrics based on previous turns indicates sophisticated pragmatic judgment and indexes a close relationship with his conversation partners.
6.5 Analysis
Dan’s singing is not random but fits systematically within the sequential organization of talk and thus emerges moment-by-moment. Recorded performances of lyrics, or texts, are typically produced in relatively long chunks (e.g., verses). Yet there is no guarantee that Dan will produce the whole song as it is written in a book or performed on the radio. The song’s ending is arrived at jointly with his conversation partner. It can end after a single “line,” or Dan can accomplish a longer, multi-unit song. The singing sequence makes relevant a response and furthers progressivity of interaction. In other words, just like talk, his singing is locally occasioned and contingent on surrounding talk and involvement of other participants.
The concepts of preference, alignment, and affiliation are important for understanding what Dan accomplishes with singing. Broadly, the notion of preference refers to mostly implicit principles that participants orient to when they act and respond in interaction (Pomerantz & Heritage, Reference Pomerantz, Heritage, Sidnell and Stivers2013). These principles govern multiple domains of interaction, from the design of turns to norms for responding to different types of actions (Pomerantz & Heritage, Reference Pomerantz, Heritage, Sidnell and Stivers2013; Sidnell, Reference Sidnell2010). Most relevant to singing is the preference for a response that promotes progression of an action sequence. For example, the action-type preference of an invitation is an acceptance (Sidnell, Reference Sidnell2010). Participants manage this constraint when responding in disagreement or rejection of a preceding action by designing a turn with features that project dispreference, such as delays, palliatives, accounts, and pro-forma agreement. Dan sometimes sings to close sequences marked by this type of dispreference. Related concepts are alignment and affiliation. Alignment refers to the current state of talk, such as participants adjusting to a change in turn-taking to accommodate storytelling – or in this case singing (Mandelbaum, Reference Mandelbaum, Sidnell and Stivers2013). Affiliation is about affective stances to events and previous talk, and participants may adopt or reject each other’s interpretation of them. A recipient may exhibit conflict regarding these two orientations to talk by, for example, going along with a switch from talk to singing (alignment) but not displaying support of the singer’s stance that the singing was funny (disaffiliation).
Dan performs a range of actions through singing. Humor is one of his main accomplishments, and it is an important way in which he uses singing to participate in conversation. The humor of Dan’s singing is an interactional achievement, and it contributes to his situational construction of self as a funny and clever person. Humor can also contribute to the achievement of other actions, and the humorous key of his singing helps dissipate disaffiliation in sequences that are characterized by dispreference. There are further examples of Dan using singing to express appreciation and gratitude. Dan’s singing in these contexts also works towards building affiliation and closeness. Yet there are contrasting examples of Dan raising a complaint by singing and also of Morgan treating his singing as making a request, which demonstrate that singing is a flexible interactional resource. In the following sections I analyze the turn-taking structure of Dan’s singing. I then turn to what he accomplishes with it, first in terms of humor and then by examining specific actions including complimenting, complaining, and requesting.
6.5.1 Singing in the Turn-Taking Structure of Talk
Dan sings in a wide range of discursive locations. In terms of sections of conversation in the most general sense, Dan sings in middle and closing (or adjourning) sections. It remains inconclusive whether he sings during openings, such as greeting sequences, as those were not recorded. Sections of conversation are a relatively coarse division of interaction. In terms of fine-grained sequential structure, Dan sometimes sings modified songs to open sequences but more often as second pair parts or post-expansions. His singing is thus relatively unconstrained by position.
The length of Dan’s songs spans from single, short turns to multiple turns with intervening talk. On the sparser side, 10 of Dan’s 39 singing occurrences are “one liners.” In Extract 2, for example, Dan produces a short singing turn, and Morgan speaks afterwards.
Extract 2 9-2011
01 DA: ((modified “The Fireman’s Band”)) 02 ♫ Oh jakey jabs oh jakey jabs 03 MO: ºHih ºhih (1.2) yeah (0.6) hhh (0.3) let’s take 04 our cameras (0.6) in case there are any (1.3) 05 wildlife
In an earlier sequence, Morgan informed Dan that they were going to a store she calls Jake Jabs. Dan uses the store name in a single line of singing, and Morgan laughs in appreciation. One could argue that she is curtailing his song by starting a new sequence about taking cameras. However, Morgan does not latch her turn onto Dan’s singing turn, nor does she speak in overlap, and Dan does not continue singing during the pauses in line 3.
Dan also treats a similar single line of lyrics as complete in many other excerpts such as in Extract 3.
Extract 3 4-2014
01 MO: U:m I’ll get your lunch pills. 02 (0.7) 03 DA: ((modified “The Fireman’s band”)) 04 ♫ Oh lunchy pills oh lunchy pills 05 (0.7) 06 Boy this looks like a good lunch Morgan.
Here, Dan himself pauses then switches to talking after the first line of the same song seen in Extract 2. This means that a potential end to a singing turn, and thus a possible transition relevance place to next speaker, is located at the end of a relatively short turn of singing. What constitutes a “line” or turn constructional unit (TCU) is song-specific, and the data suggest that both participants treat the formulaic sequence [oh xxx oh xxx] performed with prosody from “The Fireman’s Band” as a TCU (Foster, Reference Foster2015).
Singing beyond the first TCU is an accomplishment that is contingent upon the actions of co-participants. Co-participants have a role in song extension through use of silences that invite more, continuers, minimal assessments, and laughter (Foster, Reference Foster2015). Additionally, Dan extends songs following explicit invitation for continuation and to account for the song’s relevance, as exemplified in Extract 4. Dan and Morgan have been talking about slip trailing, a technique for applying raised patterns to ceramics. Dan enjoyed making pottery as a hobby after retirement. Earlier he was complaining about his difficulty learning how to do slip trailing, and they had some disagreement over what makes it challenging. The interaction continues below with talk about his trouble. He eventually sings to the tune and general structure of “Old McDonald,” a children’s song in which the singer names an animal and the sound it makes on Old McDonald’s farm, before ending the verse with “e–i–e–i–o.”
Extract 4 3-2014
01 DA: Boy I tell you I couldn’t do it (.) I literally 02 couldn’t do it 03 MO: Mmm-hmm 04 (1.5) 05 With practice 06 (3.5) 07 Like everything else it’s practice practice practice 08 DA: Yeah but if: f:or a person who it’s not their 09 business y’know [already] retired heh hih 10 MO: [Mmmhmm ] 11 DA: [Huh huh huh huh] 12 MO: [Huh huh hih hih] hih hih ((sniff)) 13 DA: There aren’t many years left to practice= 14 MO: =Mmm-hmm 15 (3.8) 16 MO: Yeah and if you’re just dabbling (0.5) (to g-) 17 (0.8) 18 DA: Yeah 19 (0.4) 20 MO: Y- y- you can’t spend that time 21 (0.6) 22 DA: ((modified “Old MacDonald”)) 23 ♫ A dabble here and a dabble there= 24 ♫ here a dabble there a dabble= 25 ♫ everywhere a dabble dabble 26 (2.5) 27 MO: Hih hih hih ((sniff)) hih (.) 28 DA: I won’t say the rest of it 29 (0.6) 30 MO: Oh go on huh hih hih 31 DA: ♫ Old MacDonald had a farm 32 (0.3) 33 ♫ e-i-e-i-o 34 (3.4) 35 MO: What did that got to- to do with pottery (.) 36 heh hih [hih 37 DA: ♫ [With a dabble dabble here= 38 ♫ and a dabble dabble there= 39 ♫ here a dabble there a dabble= 40 ♫ everywhere a dabble dabble .hh 41 ♫ Old MacDonald had a farm 42 (2.8) 43 ♫ And on this farm he had a pottery lab 44 (.) 45 ♫ [e-i-e-i-o ] 46 MO: [Huh huh hih hih] hih hih hih (0.6) ((sniff)) hih 47 DA: ((smile))
In line 23, Dan recontextualizes Morgan’s earlier dabble (line 16) in his version of “Old MacDonald.” Morgan volunteers laughter (line 27), and Dan comes to a possible ending of the song with I won’t say the rest of it (line 28), which hints at the potential for more but a decision to stop. Morgan does not accept the ending and invites continuation with oh go on plus more laughter (line 30). Dan extends the song with the usual final verse Old MacDonald had a farm e–i–e–i–o (lines 31 and 33). This is another possible ending point, but Morgan again does not treat it as an acceptable one. She instead pursues an account for the song’s relevance (line 35). By asking what the song had to do with pottery, Morgan’s go-ahead for more singing emerges as more than a general request for additional lyrics. Singing the rest of it does not just mean any lyrics in this case but ones that relate to prior talk. Dan responds by singing with reference to pottery (line 43). The song again comes to a possible completion point with e–i–e–i–o, with Morgan laughing in overlap (lines 45–46) and Dan producing an affiliative smile. This time, the song ends. The fact that Morgan pursues more singing and Dan expands the song to account for its relevance shows that the song’s ending is contingent and arrived at jointly. Dan makes decisions about appropriate stopping points, but the ending of the song is negotiable. Dan can be held accountable for how the singing relates to the ongoing action, and a lot of interactional work is done to establish progressivity by singing turns and the talk that follows.
Beyond the analytical account of how Dan’s singing fits into the structure of talk, Dan’s innovative songs reveal his exceptional cognitive and creative competencies. His skill at manipulating lyrics into new songs reveals strengths in at least attention, working memory, semantic memory, pattern recognition, and musical memory. These are aspects of cognition that are required to retain words and themes from previous turns and fit them into the syllabic patterns, rhyme, grammatical structures, and concepts of the original lyrics. In an exploration of the poetics of ordinary conversation, Jefferson (Reference Jefferson1996) presents a collection of talk that is produced in part by reference to previous sounds and word categories (e.g., puns, sounds repeated across turns). Dan’s singing puts this type of poetics at the forefront in the way that he playfully integrates words from Morgan’s turns into the formulaic structure of the song. Dan’s singing positions him as someone who can astutely monitor conversation for sources of musical wordplay and as an active participant who creatively furthers interaction. In the next section I analyze how Morgan and Dan orient to his poetics as humorous and well-constructed.
6.5.2 Accomplishing Humor through Singing
Dan at times uses singing to close sequences that are characterized by dispreference and redirects the interaction toward affiliation with humor. Literature on singing in conversation by neurotypical participants is lacking with a few exceptions. In a study by Frick (Reference Frick2013), Finnish speakers in Estonia use singing to end extended interactional sequences that include signs of nonalignment and dispreference, such as being silent after a story and not granting requests. Frick describes how participants in one example follow singing with smiles, laughter, and other sound-making. She argues that this affiliative joint activity builds rapport and distances them from the dispreferred actions without calling for continuation of the sequence. Extract 4 illustrates a similar use of singing by Dan in English. The extended interaction has elements of dispreference and disagreement: dispreference in the blocking of progression of talk about troubles, overt disagreement about slip trailing, and conflicting characterizations of his degree of involvement in pottery. Dan’s singing ends the interaction on a humorous key. Morgan laughs repeatedly during the song, and Dan’s final smile solidifies affiliation as they close the sequence about his involvement with slip trailing and pottery.
Dan’s singing is often treated as funny by co-participants. In many of the extracts, Morgan laughs during and after Dan’s singing, sometimes even when Dan has not laughed. Jefferson (Reference Jefferson and Psathas1979) compares structurally and sequentially distinct types of recipient laughter. Volunteered laughter is produced after a recognition point, which is a moment when a recipient recognizes that laughter is warranted. A recipient produces speaker-invited laughter after a speaker’s end-of-turn or within-turn laughter. There are many examples of Dan and Morgan treating Dan’s singing as humorous by using both types of laughter. The laughter may be volunteered laughter as in Extract 5.
Extract 5 9-2011
01 DA: ((modified “The Fireman’s Band”)) 02 ♫ Oh don’t you really really think 03 (2.7) 04 ♫ Vultures should stay asleep 05 (0.9) 06 MO: Ha ha ha ha .hh heh ha ha ha hih .hh oh hh
After Dan sings about the vulture, which is a persistent theme throughout the interaction, Morgan produces a stretch of laughter (line 6). In Extract 5, Morgan laughs after a short gap, but she does not always wait until the end of the song to laugh. Lerner (Reference Lerner, Ochs, Schegloff and Thompson1996: 259) writes that “a recipient need not delay affiliation until next turn” with laughter. Indeed, in other examples Morgan laughs throughout and even in overlap with Dan’s singing. Her laughter in overlap demonstrates her understanding of his singing as funny, even near the onset of singing.
In addition to volunteered laughter, Morgan sometimes replies to Dan’s singing with a joke of her own. Extract 6 provides an example.
Extract 6 9-2011
01 DA: ((modified “The Fireman’s Band”)) 02 ♫ Oh don’t you really really think 03 (1.1) 04 DA: ♫ That we should see the turkey vulture 05 (0.4) 06 MO: Huh hih ((sniff)) (.) 07 DA: (xxx) 08 MO: Hh (0.8) Don’t go out if you’re not feeling well hh 09 (2.5) ((Dan looks at Morgan and opens mouth)) 10 DA: Wh(h)at? (.) 11 MO: Heh huh hah [ha .hh hih huh hih hih hih huh hahahahaha 12 DA: [.Hhh HA HA .hhhhhh (H)o(h)k(h)ay .hhhh 13 (h)I (h)w[(h)on’t .hhhhhh] uh huh uh huh .hhh 14 MO: [.Hh hih hih hih]
In this example and on other occasions Morgan makes a humorous remark related to Dan’s song immediately after he finishes singing. Morgan briefly laughs before her turn don’t go out if you’re not feeling well that teases about the possible danger of a weakened person falling prey to vultures. Dan meets her joke with astonishment – as he often does to jokes that are rude, morbid, or at his expense – by looking at Morgan with a wide-open-mouth posture and asking a question with laughter (Wilkinson & Kitzinger, Reference Wilkinson and Kitzinger2006). In this case, Dan produces wh(h)at (line 10) followed by agreement (lines 12–13) and a great deal of laughter. Morgan does not treat his question as a problem with hearing or understanding but instead laughs as well. Jokes can come in tit-for-tat succession, and Morgan’s laughter plus in-kind humorous responses are further evidence that some of Dan’s songs are designed to be funny and are taken as such.
There is evidence that Dan and Morgan orient to wordplay within the song’s original lyrical structure as constituting humor. The participants’ retrospective characterization of singing in Extract 7 provides evidence of this. Morgan and Dan are finishing a meal, and Morgan invites Dan to think about a trip they have planned for the following day.
Extract 7 9-2014
After Dan finishes singing, Morgan volunteers laughter and evaluates his song with oh goody goody (line 16). Dan joins in her laughter and says fool you didn’t I (line 23). Morgan agrees, and Dan expands with you weren’t sure what I was gonna say (line 25). Morgan again agrees and adds that was a new variant on the theme (lines 29–30). Both Morgan and Dan have treated the song as laughable. A laughable song can fool you because you won’t be sure what he is gonna say, and part of the fun of Dan’s singing is anticipating how he is going to make a new variant on the theme by modifying recognizable lyrics. His performances have value, in part, from the novelty and creativity in which he recontextualizes the text by changing elements based on surrounding talk. In other words, humor hinges on unpredictability within a formulaic sequence and on Dan’s competent performance of clever modifications.
Morgan does not always agree with Dan’s stance towards humor. This type of disaffiliation can be accomplished by withholding laughter. Morgan’s absence of laughter is especially salient after Dan invites her to laugh. Jefferson (Reference Jefferson and Psathas1979: 93) writes, “One technique for inviting laughter is the placement, by speaker, of a laugh just at completion of utterance, and one technique for accepting that invitation is the placement, by recipient, of a laugh just after onset of speaker’s laughter.” A co-participant, however, does not have to accept speaker-invited laughter. For example, in Extract 8 Morgan volunteers laughter at the start of the song but does not join Dan in laughing afterwards.
Extract 8 9-2011
01 MO: O(.)kay here’s some un(.)der(.)wea:r (1.5) 02 and some sockie wokies? 03 (0.5) 04 DA: ((modified “The Fireman’s Band”)) 05 ♫ Oh sockie wokies oh sockie wokies 06 (0.9) 07 DA: ♫ How I like some sockie wokies 08 (0.5) 09 MO: Mm[hm] 10 DA: ♫ [Oh] don’t [you really really] think 11 MO: [Hh heh heh heh heh] 12 (1.3) 13 DA: ♫ To have sockie wokies (1.0) to wear upon my feet 14 MO: Hh 15 (0.3) 16 DA: ↑HA HA (0.6) that song didn’t wanna come out (.) 17 but it ca[me out.] 18 MO: [Uh yeah] eh [it sort] of came out. 19 DA: [Heh heh]
Morgan is helping Dan get dressed, and after she offers him socks, Dan uses the sockie wokies from her turn for another version of “The Fireman’s Band.” Morgan volunteers laughter in the midst of Dan’s singing (line 11) and takes the position that his singing is humorous in that moment. However, after Dan finishes his song, Morgan declines to laugh and even does a hard exhale (line 14) – perhaps indicating disapproval. Dan’s loud laughter (line 16) makes her laughter relevant again. Morgan does not immediately laugh, and Dan continues with an assessment that song didn’t wanna come out but it came out (lines 16–17) that puts a somewhat positive spin on his difficulty with the song. Jefferson (Reference Jefferson and Psathas1979: 93) explains that one technique to decline an invitation to laugh is with recipient talk that does “serious pursuit of topic as a counter to the pursuit of laughter.” Dan’s it came out provides an alternative route for Morgan, and she declines to laugh by instead responding to Dan’s assessment of the song’s construction. Morgan disagrees with his stance that his rendition came out. She accomplishes this disaffiliation by countering with a second assessment that repeats part of his turn with the added negative qualification that it sort of came out (line 18).
While not made explicit, it could be that their assessments speak to how well his song’s final line to have sockie wokies to wear upon my feet maintained the rhythmic and grammatical structure of the song’s original lyrics “that we should have another drink.” In any case, Morgan’s stance in Extract 8 illustrates that the humor of Dan’s performance is not predetermined. Whether Dan accomplishes humor or not is contingent on the unfolding structure of his lyrics, and participants may shift their stance as the song emerges. The humor of his performance is an accomplishment at every turn.
In summary, doing humor is one of the primary things that Dan accomplishes with singing. A song’s ability to provoke laughter may depend on how well Dan maintains a balance between providing unique modifications while preserving the form of the original text (e.g., syllabic structure, syntactic structure, and final rhyme). Humor may also depend on how well the song reflects semantic themes of the prior discourse. Evidence that Dan and Morgan orient to these elements as constituting humor or a “good” song are found in their responses to his singing. Evaluation of the song may include reference to the song’s relevance to ongoing talk (e.g., what did that got to do with pottery in Extract 4), the construction of the song (e.g., that song didn’t wanna come out in Extract 8), and unpredictability of the wordplay (e.g., fool you didn’t I in Extract 7). Although Dan and Morgan both often treat Dan’s singing as laughable, Morgan does not always affiliate with Dan’s stance toward his singing. The humor of Dan’s singing is an interactional accomplishment that is not guaranteed by the original text, and its achievement contributes to Dan’s situational construction of self as clever and funny.
6.5.3 Doing Complimenting, Complaining, and Requesting through Singing
In addition to using singing to do humor, Dan sings to accomplish a range of other actions including complimenting, complaining, and requesting. I address each of these in turn. There are multiple examples of Dan singing compliments and appreciation in the data. In the most transparent examples, Dan explicitly identifies the person or the action that he appreciates. For instance, in Extract 1 Dan is eating when he announces that he is slowing down with his meal and getting full. Morgan’s well you’ve attacked that with gusto could account for why he is slowing down and getting full. Dan could simply agree with her, or he could provide an alternate account for why he ate that way (e.g., with an assessment about the meal). Dan goes down the latter path with the second part of his song I’m half crazy over eating with you. Morgan treats his singing as a compliment with well that’s very kind of you. In other examples, Dan similarly does gratitude for offers of assistance (Foster, Reference Foster2015).
There are also two examples in which Dan’s singing turns express appreciation for his food, Extracts 9 and 10.
Extract 9 7-2014
01 DA: ((modified “Bicycle Built for Two”)) 02 ♫ Blueberries blueberries 03 (1.8) 04 DA: ♫ Give me your answer true 05 (0.3) 06 MO: M:::hm 07 DA: ♫ I’m half crazy (0.3) for the cereal on you 08 (11.6) ((He continues eating)) 09 DA: ♫ It won’t be a stylish (.) meal 10 (.) 11 DA: ♫ I can’t afford a Coors 12 (3.9) 13 DA: ♫ But you’ll taste sweet 14 (5.4) 15 DA: ♫ On some ice cream and (0.3) cookies 16 hih hih heh heh ((He flashes gaze to Morgan)) 17 MO: Mmm [mmhmm mm hih ] 18 DA: [I don’t know .hh] ºheh ºhih .hh Extract 10 7-2014
01 DA: ((modified “Bicycle Built for Two”)) 02 ♫ Black beans black beans give me your answer true 03 (.) 04 MO: ((in adjoining room)) Uh hhh 05 DA: ♫ I’m half crazy over the protein in you 06 ((He eats a bite of beans.))
In Extract 9, Dan starts by singing about his meal of blueberries and cereal (lines 2, 4, and 7). This portion of the song ends with I’m half crazy for the cereal on you. There is silence for over 11 seconds while Dan eats. He then continues singing it won’t be a stylish meal I can’t afford a Coors (beer) (lines 9 and 11) before describing an imagined meal in which the blueberries will taste sweet on some ice cream and cookies (lines 13 and 15). After he finishes singing, Dan laughs and looks briefly at Morgan who is preoccupied with writing an email. In the second example, Extract 10, Morgan is out of visual range but can hear Dan from the next room. In line 5, Dan does appreciation of the black beans and their protein content. In both of these extracts Morgan is within hearing distance but occupied with other activities. It could be that the main project of these singing turns is to do gratitude for the meal and/or to re-establish joint interaction with Morgan. Unfortunately, Morgan’s lack of uptake means that we cannot be certain how she might treat his singing his appreciation of food. In many other examples of talk, however, Dan notices ingredients and their attributes in the food that he is eating and then thanks Morgan for taking care of him. This collocation suggests that his doing appreciation of food is part of a practice of expressing gratitude for caregiving.
Dan’s singing often expresses affection by doing appreciation for companionship, gratitude for assistance, and positive evaluations of food. The songs he modifies to accomplish this is the love song “Bicycle built for two,” and Dan can easily change the text to express affection that is specific to each encounter. Dan is acutely aware of the daily help that he needs, and he is quick to express thanks for assistance. He often says things such as thank you for this meal or thank you for taking care of me multiple times during a meal. Modifying songs, especially the sweet love song “Bicycle built for two,” is a resource Dan uses to creatively build closeness and intimacy with Morgan.
Of course, as with talk, there is not a one-to-one correlation between singing and action. Dan at times does a complaint through singing, much in contrast to the humor and appreciation discussed earlier. In Extract 11, for example, Morgan starts a new sequence about a visual word puzzle, or “wuzzle,” that was posted at her gym. Dan sometimes sings in response to Morgan’s announcements of upcoming activities (see Foster (Reference Foster2015) for an analysis of Dan’s singing in response to “mere informings” of new activities in terms of deontic congruence). In this case, Dan’s singing resists the activity.
Extract 11 4-2014
01 MO: Oh there was another wuzzle 02 today hh (.) one of these word puzzles 03 (2.7) ((She starts writing down the wuzzle)) 04 DA: ((modified “Old MacDonald”)) 05 ♫ Wuzzle here and a wuzzle there 06 ♫ here a wuzzle there a wuzzle 07 ♫ old Mac (0.5) Donald liked his wuzzles= 08 MO: =Mhmm? 09 (1.0) 10 DA: ♫ e-i-e-i-o 11 (0.9) 12 DA: ♫ And I don’t like wuzzles very much 13 (0.9) 14 MO: You’re good you’re pretty good at them, 15 ((She finishes writing the wuzzle)) 16 (0.5) 17 DA: We:ll, 18 MO: ((She holds wuzzle facing Dan and walks toward him))
Extract 11 starts with Morgan’s announcement oh there was another wuzzle today one of these word puzzles (lines 1–2). Her announcement projects the possibility of more than simply news of a new wuzzle. Indeed, Morgan starts writing down the wuzzle, which strengthens the possibility that her announcement is part of a larger “doing the wuzzle” project. Dan then sings a modified version of “Old MacDonald” that contrasts Old MacDonald’s liking of wuzzles to his own dislike of them. The singing concludes with I don’t like wuzzles very much (line 12) that anticipates this larger project. Morgan responds with an assessment you’re good you’re pretty good at them (line 14), and her complimenting turn could also be heard as an account for why he could do the wuzzle despite disliking them. Dan does not align with her assessment, possibly because of the problem of how to respond to compliments (see Pomerantz (Reference Pomerantz and Schenkein1978) on the multiple constrains on compliment sequences), but an agreement might also weaken his resistance to the activity. Morgan presents him with the wuzzle in any case.
Morgan’s another wuzzle (line 1) is relevant here as it points to a repeated activity in which Morgan brings home word puzzles for Dan. Dan struggles with comprehending and completing them. In this instance, Dan takes almost a minute to do the basic word puzzle, and Morgan provides so many clues to assist him that he complains several times you told me the answer. In light of this, Dan’s singing can be heard as a complaint that resists the upcoming wuzzle, an activity that exposes his impaired cognition.
In addition to modifying lyrics to do an appreciation or a complaint, there are two examples in the data of either Dan or Morgan treating his singing as doing a request. Although Dan does not modify the lyrics of “The Fireman’s Band” in these instances, his singing is interpreted within the framework of everyday talk and not treated as a performance of the song to be evaluated. In the first example, Extract 12, Dan sings as Morgan places a cup of coffee in front of him.
Extract 12 12-2014
01 DA: ((“The Fireman’s band”)) 02 ♫ Oh the fireman’s band the fireman’s band 03 ♫ here’s my heart and here’s my hand 04 MO: ((Morgan puts coffee cup in front of Dan)) 05 DA: ♫ Oh don’t you really really think 06 ♫ that we should have another drink 07 MO: .Hh ha ha 08 DA: Ha heh 09 MO: .Hh [oka:y] there’s [some coff]ee 10 DA: [I got] [coffee ] 11 MO: For y[ou .hh huh heh hih 12 DA: [I got some coffee it worked heh 13 MO: [It worked ok(h)]ay hih ha ha (.) ha ↘o:h dear 14 DA: [ºHih ºhih ºhih ]
At the start of Extract 12 Morgan is walking into the room holding Dan’s cup of coffee as Dan sings a drinking song. This example could be viewed as Dan matching his singing to the events occurring in the world. Retrospectively, however, Dan’s turn it worked (line 12) positions his singing – even if jokingly – as a successful request that Morgan has fulfilled.
In the second example, Extract 13, Morgan herself responds to Dan’s singing as a request that requires an account.
Extract 13 4-2014
01 MO: And w:hy do you think that we should have 02 another drink. Hh 03 DA: ºI ºwas ºjust (1.9) trying to be soci[able.] 04 MO: [Hh ] hah 05 MO: s(h)ociable. 06 DA: Hih heh hih hah (0.3) .hh 07 MO: Mmm 08 (0.7) 09 DA: Hh 10 MO: Well, you can: ↑have another drink if you li:ke but 11 [it’s uh root] 12 DA: [Better be wa]ter 13 MO: It’s root beer hh [ha ha] ha .hh ºhih 14 DA: [I see] 15 MO: heh huh 16 MO: Heh hhh .hhh ↓o:h ↓well. (2.1) ↓o:[ka::y ] 17 DA: [Here we are] 18 right next to Coo:rs at least close to it= 19 MO: =Mmhmm= 20 DA: =And I don’t even get any beer.
Dan has sung “The Fireman’s Band” just before this extract, and Morgan treats Dan’s singing as an actual request for a drink. She first seeks an account for it with and why do you think that we should have another drink (lines 1–2) and later offers him a root beer (lines 10 and 13). Dan is aware of the fact that he has medical and pharmaceutical restrictions on how much alcohol he can drink (see better be water (line 12) and his lament here we are right next to Coors at least close to it and I don’t even get any beer (lines 17–18, 20)), so it is unlikely that he meant for his singing to be taken as a sincere request for an alcoholic beverage. Indeed, Dan counters by providing an alternative version of what he was attempting to accomplish with I was just trying to be sociable (line 3).
In this section I have primarily focused on how Dan and Morgan give meaning to Dan’s singing by how their responses – such as laughter, assessment, and pursuit of an account – treat it. Extract 13 is a rare case in which Dan uses metalanguage to describe the meaning of it. Even more, it is an example in which Morgan’s treatment of Dan’s singing is not in alignment with how he describes it. Enfield (Reference Enfield2013: 101) uses the term treating‑as to describe the response process participants usually use to characterize a speaker’s actions, in contrast to a describing‑as categorization process. For example, responding to “You look nice” with “Thank you” treats the previous turn as a compliment whereas “He gave me a compliment” explicitly describes it as one. Dan provides us with a described‑as account for his singing that suggests a broad emic action category of being sociable. In this general sense, we may treat all of Dan’s singing events that I have discussed as doing being sociable. He could simply speak instead of sing, but singing allows him to be sociable by performing entertaining songs. The texts that he sings are not neutral vehicles. They are clever and humorous variations of drinking songs, love songs, and children’s songs. Dan’s performances are a resource for him to position himself as funny, affectionate, and as a guy who used to enjoy a drink and who would still like to have one now.
6.6 Conclusion
Dan’s account I was just trying to be sociable displays an orientation to singing as a form of engagement and participation. Singing is a relatively open-ended resource for Dan use to do things in interaction. There are instances in the data of him doing humor and wordplay, closing sequences to re-establish affiliation, doing appreciation and gratitude, responding to a noticing or informing turn, responding to turns that announce a new activity, and changing the trajectory of talk (Foster, Reference Foster2015). Dan also uses singing to accomplish actions such as complimenting and complaining. The variety of functions does not mean that Dan’s singing is random or asocial. Dan’s singing is a flexible interactional resource because he astutely monitors conversation and modifies songs to the discursive context at hand.
Singing provides Dan with a route to competency despite his severe short-term memory impairment and dependence on Morgan. His technical ability to recall tunes and spontaneously alter lyrics that stay true to a conceptual theme from the prior talk while still maintaining elements of the original formulaic structure is no small feat. It manifests his cognitive strengths of attention, pattern recognition and formation, conceptualization, semantic memory, and working memory. Singing is also a medium in which he can do things that he is good at interactionally, such as being funny, affectionate, and appreciative. His singing at times provides an avenue for resisting cognitively challenging activities that expose his impairment, like the wuzzle. Morgan holds Dan accountable for the relevancy of his singing to ongoing talk, and he is also susceptible to her evaluation of his song’s composition. Modified singing thus provides Dan with several avenues for displaying competence: (1) accessing musical memory to produce the tune and multiple cognitive skills to manipulate the original lyrical structure, (2) demonstrating the appropriateness of his singing by grounding texts in the immediate discursive context, and (3) showing skill in creative and clever wordplay within the structure of the lyrical text. Morgan also treats Dan as competent by responding to his singing turns as producing meaningful actions and replying with her own jokes in tit-for-tat succession. Dan and Morgan’s interactions involving singing thus provide a compelling case of adaption to changes in cognition over time not only within a person but also between people.
There is a persistent notion that people with dementia lose identity along with the loss of coherence and memory, analogous even with death. Dan’s singing illustrates important alternative roles that can be constructed in contrast to person with dementia. First, Dan’s singing is a way for him to articulate creative wordplay, and each performance in which Dan accomplishes humor positions him as a funny and clever person. The stances that Dan and other participants take towards his performances position him as a particular type of singer in the moment. Those stances accumulate in a bottom-up fashion to construct Dan a more “durable” identity (such as jokester) than is found in his temporary participant roles (see Bucholtz and Hall (Reference Bucholtz and Hall2005) on stance accretion, usually discussed in relation to macro identities like gender).
Second, Dan’s singing is one avenue for Dan and Morgan to discursively construct their relationship as a couple. Dan’s affectionate singing makes salient the intimate relationship he shares with Morgan. It points to his identity as her spouse and takes a positive affective stance towards it. Yet the relationship work they accomplish goes beyond the compliments he sings to her. His repetition of lyrical texts with situational modifications is a shared experience. Work by Goodwin (Reference Goodwin1987) and Muntigl and Choi (Reference Muntigl and Choi2010) on displays of not remembering has shown how speakers can take an epistemic orientation to talk by treating other participants as knowing or unknowing of a forgotten word or event. Depending on the type of information in question, positioning someone as having access to it can make relevant larger social identities. Talk that makes visible shared knowledge of activities may additionally provide for inferences of interpersonal relations, such as being a couple, by implying a close relationship. Both Dan and Morgan position her as a knowing recipient who is aware of the songs in his repertoire and his practice of modifying them. Dan’s version of “The Fireman’s Band” in Extract 7 could only fool Morgan and be recognized as a surprising variant on the theme if she were very familiar with his singing. Recognition of short segments of tunes and new variants of the lyrics, which could only be accomplish through repeated shared experience, thus indirectly indexes their long-term relationship.
This case study also establishes the vital importance of analyzing conversations that take place in the home in order to provide insight into interactional resources that people with dementia use in everyday life. Dan only sings in conversation with close family members, so standardized language assessment and conversation sampling in a clinical or professional care setting would not elicit his singing. In fact, his family noted that he did not sing during a short stay at a physical rehabilitation center. Since then, Dan has been able to remain at home with Morgan with assistance from professional caregivers. Morgan observed that Dan does not sing to the caregivers, even though they have been with him for over a year and a half. Without access to interactions between Dan and Morgan outside of an institutional or professional caregiving context, we would miss the interactional achievements that Dan accomplishes with his singing and also the role that his singing plays in his relationship with Morgan.
