DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES OF SUBJECTS WITH HIGH-ALTITUDE HYPOXIA - EXTREME ENVIRONMENT

A discourse analysis was carried out on nine European lowlanders durin g a 2-month scientific expedition at high altitude including a 3-week stay in extreme survival conditions at the summit of Mt Sajama (6542 m ), in order to contribute to the understanding of psychological adapta tion to extreme environments. This discourse analysis was part of a wi de-ranging scientific investigation involving 12 scientific and medica l research protocols which targeted human adaptation to high altitude chronic hypoxia. The objective of this study is to better understand t he presence of linguistic markers capable of translating the subject's psychological state when faced with a threatening environment. This s tudy was based on a method of propositional speech analysis developed by Ghiglione and planchet which emphasizes the cognitive function of v erb categories, modalizers and adjuncts used by subjects. The method w as developed in conjunction with psychopathological studies of the dep ressive state. Speech was recorded at time Tl, 4 days after reaching t he summit of Mt Sajama, and at time T2, 2 days before descending the m ountain peak. These results revealed that in the absence of depression in any psychopathological sense of the word, normal subjects would re act to their environment with a depressive component. However, the res ults of this study equally illustrate for some subjects a corresponden ce between those states with a depressive component and a physiologica l incomplete adaptation to high altitude. This correspondence could re flect the pathogenic effect of an adaptation deficit or could be in ke eping with the literature concerning an incomplete adaptation effect i nduced by a latent depressive state. (C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Lt d.