New study by Loughborough University suggests the bestselling novelist showed signs of Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) a decade before formal diagnosis
Sir Terry Pratchett was the best-selling and much-loved author of 41 comic ‘Discworld’ novels, as well as other works. At the end of his life, he also spoke candidly about his dementia diagnosis. He died in 2015, aged 66.
Terry Pratchett in 2005, photo by Myrmi / Unsplash
There is currently no cure for dementia but one hope is that early detection of the disease may help with treatment – as interventions can be made before permanent damage has been done to the brain.
That’s why a new study by Loughborough University has excited some interest. Led by Dr Thom Wilcockson from the university’s School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, the research team compared the ‘lexical density’ of nouns and adjectives in 33 of Sir Terry’s Discworld novels to see how they changed over time.
They concluded that the 22nd book in the series, The Last Continent (1998), shows a marked decline in the complexity of language, compared to his previous novels. That book was published almost a decade before Sir Terry was formally diagnosed with PCA (a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease).
The full study has been published in a paper entitled “Detecting dementia using lexical analysis: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld tells a more personal story”, in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Sciences, as part of a special issue on advances in speech and language research for cognitive well-being in aging.
In response to the paper, some have questioned whether this reduction in lexical diversity is really linked to the onset of dementia. ‘Was he perhaps improving and writing more precisely?’ asks the science-fiction writer David Langford in the latest issue of his newsletter Ansible.
There’s also the issue of how much a study like this can, potentially, help other people, given that few us of produce such large volumes of words as Sir Terry.
But similar studies have been conducted on the works of other authors who succumbed to dementia, such as the 2005 paper on the work of Iris Murdoch. It would be interesting to know how they compare, and whether the written word can reveal other aspects of the developing disease.
For example, some forms of dementia, have more impact on spatial skills than language – could that be detected in the way a novelist writes about physical space? As the paper concludes, ‘Further research is now needed to explore the full potential of linguistic analysis as a diagnostic tool for dementia.’
It’s also made me want to reread some of Sir Terry’s novels…
Dr Melody Pattison, Lecturer in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University and first-named author on the paper, says: ‘We would normally expect less lexical diversity as texts get longer, but even after controlling for text length, our findings were still significant. The shifts in language were not something a reader would necessarily notice, but rather a subtle, progressive change.’
Dr Wilcockson, adds: ‘Identifying dementia in the early stages is important as it may enable us to use interventions sooner before the brain is damaged beyond repair. Research indicates that memory problems may not be the first symptom of dementia. We wanted to explore whether language could be an early warning sign, and to do this, we used Sir Terry Pratchett’s books, who himself suffered dementia.
‘Our analysis found that Sir Terry’s use of language did indeed change during his career. These results suggest that language may be one of the first signs of dementia, and Sir Terry’s books reveal a potential new approach for early diagnosis.’
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