Abstract
This article uses discourse analyses to examine the narrative styles produced by 2 women with a diagnosis of dementia. Because of constrained cognitive resources, people with dementia (PWD) often use alternative strategies to weave their stories into conversations. People with dementia have difficulty in initiating and maintaining a canonical Labovian narrative structure, even with collaboration from an unimpaired conversation partner. For example, they may omit the orientation needed by the partner, or they may not look back, sum up, and achieve a resolution in ways conversational partners traditionally expect. Nevertheless, our data suggest that PWD are persistent in attempting to negotiate the use of narratives as a linguistic vehicle to express their identity and social needs in the face of cognitive decline and that their stories may be presented in different pieces or may illustrate differing perspectives from the story format initially expected by the clinician. Recognizing this can lead to an expanded set of expectations about narratives on the part of clinicians across disciplines.