A Case Study of an Aphasic Patient: Jacobson’s Cultural Model of Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles

Jacobson states that speech disorders of patients suffering from aphasia may appear either in syntagmatic or paradigmatic axes. That is, disorder in the syntagmatic axis makes the speech more metaphorical or in paradigmatic disorder makes it more metonymical. In the present study, based on Jacobson in his article, "Metaphoric and metonymic poles", the writers have analyzed the speech of an aphasic, who was speaking the standard dialect of Persian and Mazandarani dialect before the onset of an accident which damage the speech areas of his brain. The mother tongue of the patient which was Persian was used by the speech therapist during the therapy sessions. The patient was expected to be more fluent in Persian, while having less speech disorders. However, the results showed that the Mazandarani dialect was closer to his natural speech. The dominance of cultural factors, according to Jacobson, along with the dominant learning environment tends towards these results.