This Open Access book explores the intersection of multilingualism and dementia, bringing together previous research on language, aging and cognitive change. It offers an accessible guide to studying multilingualism and dementia, with a focus on interaction, ethics, and real-world research design. It also provides a critical overview of existing research, highlighting key questions addressed so far, identifying persistent gaps, and outlining what is needed to move the field forward.

Across five chapters, it discusses the major ethical and practical challenges researchers are facing in this field and explores the complexity of managing variables in research involving older, multilingual individuals living with dementia. It then guides readers through practical methodological decisions and concludes with future directions for research, policy, and practice.

This book will be of interest to academics, students and practitioners working in applied linguistics and pragmatics, particularly those with a focus on multilingualism, and health communication, especially discourses relating to dementia. 

Carolin Schneider Ward is a post-doctoral researcher in English linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, specializing in pragmatics. Her work spans (digital) health communication, multilingualism, (critical) discourse analysis in online and offline contexts. She previously authored An Ethno-Social Approach to Code Choice in Bilinguals Living with Alzheimer’s (2023).

Katrin B. Karl is a professor of Slavic linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her research focuses on Slavic-German multilingualism and language variation, including aspects of age. She initiated the UnVergessen project, in which multilingual students and persons in need of care come together and benefit from the exchange.

Aldona Rzitki is a research assistant and doctoral candidate in Slavic linguistics at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her current research focuses on the impact of lifelong multilingualism in old age, and she collaborates on the UnVergessen project.