ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the focus of the book by illuminating for the reader a body of literature that explores how to take a dimensional approach in considering the full spectrum of variation, ranging from typical to atypical communication development in a culturally and socially diverse healthcare context; with the understanding that insight gained from both typical and atypical communication is mutually informative. The impact of comparative approaches to how atypical communication is understood in healthcare and the challenges it presents in everyday healthcare interactions is also considered. Communication is essentially a social phenomenon and although it is driven by cognition, sometimes associated with intelligence and thus perceived to be ‘determined’, it is socially loaded and context dependent. Traditional forms of storytelling can often be thought of as merely a childhood experience.
