Situating Words: What Grounded Theory Brings to Dementia Research and Vice Versa

Abstract

This article advocates a certain interpretation of grounded theory for the analysis of interviews with people diagnosed with dementia. Distinguishing itself from the methodological approaches that, closer to thematic analysis, consider the discourses of the participants as “pure symptoms” or “pure meanings,” this interpretation consists in interpreting the content of the interviews jointly with their enunciation situation and the social trajectories of the participants. It then allows for extending the space of interpreting possibilities, an endeavor especially crucial in research among discredited populations.