Hello,
Can I ask a question?
According to you, dear Linguist, Wernike's aphasia called fluent aphasia; How about Broca's aphasia? As I uderstood if Broka was damaged it would cause problem in performance- fluent in speaking and writing. Why do you call the wernike's aphasia as "fluent aphasia"? Can you help me?
I was oversimplyfying a bit. Wernicke's aphasia is more a
type of fluent aphasia. Think of fluent aphasia as a general term, of which Wernicke's aphasia comes under. The reason why it is fluent is because of the speech characteristics. If you watched that video, it is clear that fluent aphasia does not affect speech production - many of the words are still English words, and they are articulated as an English speaking person would articulate them. Thus, the person with fluent aphasia has fluent speech.
I should point out that 'fluent' here has nothing to do with 'fluent' as in, "I am fluent in English, French, and Italian, but only a beginner in Spanish." Fluent means that the speech is unbroken, with no obvious pauses and hesitations. Perhaps that is where your confusion lies.
Also, keep in mind that a person with Wernicke's aphasia cannot comprehend language,
including their own. When a person with this type of aphasia talks, they are not able to correct mistakes as a normal speaker would, as they understand just as little of their own speech as they do of others' speech.
Compare this with, say, conduction aphasia, where the speaker has similar characteristics in comprehension problems as Wernike's aphasia, but they are much more aware of their problem in what they hear. They often try to correct their speech. A person with Wernicke's aphasia does not try to correct their speech.
So, keeping in mind the definition of 'fluent' I gave earlier, Broca's aphasia is under a type of aphasia called 'non-fluent aphasia'. Here, comprehension is retained and production is limited. The person with Broca's aphasia is said to have non-fluent speech - many pauses, long hesitations etc.
I hope this clears up your doubts. The reason why I opt for 'non-fluent' aphasia and 'fluent' aphasia as opposed to 'Broca's' and 'Wernicke's' aphasia respectively is that it is all too easy to assume that if a patient is diagnosed with 'Broca's aphasia', then that patient has a lesion in Broca's area. The same with Wernicke's aphasia - the diagnosis may make one assume the lesion is in Wernicke's area. I have said in a previous post that the terms 'Broca's aphasia' and 'Wernicke's aphasia'
do not describe areas of brain lesions, merely speech characteristics. To make this clear, I tend to avoid these words and go for 'fluent' and 'non-fluent'.
I would also like to mention the use of the word 'aphasic' here. I have been using it along with you in this thread, but really I should have been more consistent from the beginning. 'Aphasic' is an adjective, not a noun. It can be used as a noun, but it somewhat dehumanises the person with aphasia. Perhaps traditionally in medicine, diseases were 'more important' than the people, but that has very much changed. These days, medicine is very much about treating people
with diseases. As such, referring to a person as 'an aphasic' focuses on the disease, rather than the person, and generally should be avoided. This isn't true of all conditions, yet. There is no problem in calling someone 'a diabetic', however, the nature of aphasia makes it a more sensitive disorder, perhaps. There is no real harm in saying 'an aphasic', but it would be better put as 'an aphasic person' or 'a person with aphasia'. Rant over.