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STORIES FROM THE INSIDE OF DEMENTIA: CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH THE DISCOURSE OF EXPERIENCE


 Dementia is often characterized as a time of decline and loss. The grand narrative (i.e., the biomedical narrative) of dementia describes it as a time of meaninglessness given the inevitable loss of memory and language, fraught with difficulties recognizing familiar faces, recalling autobiographical events, and orienting to time and place. This unfortunate depiction negatively positions people living with dementia as living a ‘social death’ and overlooks the potential of forming meaningful relationships and experiencing a sense of community. Elements often overlooked can be found in the careful reading and analysis of individual interactions that make up constructions of identity, relationships, and community. In this symposium, we draw data from the “Friendship Study,” a 6-month ethnographic study on the social environments of people living with dementia in long-term care to consider meaning-making in dementia through three perspectives: phenomenological, gerontological, and discursive. The first paper considers the phenomenology of friendship, moving away from linear narratives to look at micro-constructions of identity. The second considers the co-construction of friendship through discursive elements found in conversational interactions. The third challenges staff’s construction of residents, highlighting how negative assumptions about resident capabilities can affect personal relationships and the social environment.