The Capacity for Dementia Fiction to Facilitate Understanding and Empathy Towards People Living with Dementia

This article explores the capacity of fictional dementia narratives to foster understanding and empathy towards people living with dementia. We do so from an empirical perspective using reader response data, gathered using reading groups as part of an interdisciplinary research project. There is often a lack of awareness and understanding of dementia, which results in stigmatisation and discrimination that negatively impacts on people living with dementia; therefore, examining the potential of dementia fiction to promote understanding and empathy is critically important. Our project is the first to use empirical research methods to explore real readers’ responses to dementia fiction. We show how different textual features (i.e. metaphor, underlexicalisation, pragmatic difficulties and sensory descriptions) and textual effects (i.e. dramatic irony) enable readers to vicariously feel what it is like to experience the symptoms of dementia. We argue that iconicity in dementia fiction paves the way for understanding and empathy.