Purpose: Aphasia is a neurogenic acquired language disorder that requires a multidisciplinary team approach in its evaluation and rehabilitation. Speech and language therapists (SLTs), who have a fundamental professional responsibility for rehabilitation as well as evaluation to determine the presence and type of aphasia, are a crucial part of this team. The aim of this research was to investigate the graduate theses on the linguistic features of the aphasia in terms of different variables such as the year of publication, the university/department where the thesis was prepared along with the type of aphasia and the linguistic components examined. In addition, another aim of this study was to describe the theoretical contribution of SLTs to the linguistic aspects of aphasia in Turkish by comparing it with other fields of profession. Method: In this study, the document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. In the data collection process for the research, a search was made with the keywords “aphasia” and “acquired language disorder” in the thesis database of the official website of the Council of Higher Education Thesis Center (COHE Thesis Center). Results: As a result of the search, a total of 94 graduate theses completed between 1973-2021 were accessed. Among these theses, 21 theses that met the study’s inclusion criteria were included in this study. Respectively, (a) the distribution of theses done by SLT and by other departments depending on universities, institutes, and departments, (b) the distribution of theses done at different graduate levels by years, (c) the distribution of linguistic components of graduate theses according to language areas (receptive/expressive language), (d) the distribution of linguistic components examined in graduate theses on aphasia in SLT and other departments, (e) the distribution of aphasia type in participants recruited in the thesis study, (f) the distribution of theses that focused on aphasia assessment and/or aphasia therapy, and (g) the distribution of traditional and non-traditional (brain stimulation, brain imaging) evaluation and therapy methods used in the thesis was examined. Conclusion: Although the number of studies on the linguistic features of aphasia in graduate theses in Turkey has increased gradually in recent years, it still appears to be limited. It has been noted that so far pragmatic and phonologic components in receptive language and pragmatic and morphologic components in expressive language are the least studied aspects by all departments It is supposed that this investigation will contribute to the literature by evaluating the language in aphasia and determining the appropriate targets for language rehabilitation. Additionally, it reveals a current overview of the previous theses on the linguistic features of aphasia specific to Turkish which is an agglutinative language.
Keywords
aphasia, linguistics, speech and language therapy, acquired language disorder, graduate thesis
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