ABSTRACT
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, senile, communication competence,
caregiving
There are many margins to communication. They come with the social environment and
make some of us less accessible than others. History, geography, and fate slot us into
communities that preserve their identities at such margins. Language itself is marginal, as
we struggle to overcome, despite the ambiguities of our words and the gaps they leave,
the interpersonal spaces that separate distinct selves. So, what could be more central to
human experience than these margins? Isn’t that which is furthest from the center also the
outer boundary at which we open up, expand our horizons, negotiate our senses of
reality? Center and margin define the ancient dialectic of belonging and exclusion; the
potential to be truly human, of fellowship, does not exist deeply buried within us. It must
be fulfilled by venturing to the edge of comfort, by reaching beyond our grasp, by turning
our own margins and those of others into a commons for us all. In a scholarly sense, this
is also what is undertaken in this chapter.
