Clinical linguistics

This chapter examines the many ways in which language and communication can break down in children and adults. These so-called communication disorders are usually the result of illness, disease and injury. These medical and traumatic events can compromise speech and language or the ability to produce voice, and have their onset in the developmental period or childhood, or adulthood and later life. You will be introduced to various stages in the communication cycle, and the specific disorders that result when these stages are disrupted. By locating disorders at different points in this cycle, you will see that quite different processes are involved in communication disorders. Several clinical distinctions that are integral to the study of communication disorders and to the work of speech and language therapists will be examined. They include the distinction between a receptive and an expressive language disorder, a developmental and an acquired communication disorder and an important clinical distinction between a speech disorder and a language disorder. You will then see how these disorders are manifested in children and adults through a discussion of speech, language and voice in two developmental and two acquired communication disorders: cleft lip and palate, and specific language impairment in children, and aphasia and laryngectomy in adults. By the end of the chapter, you will have knowledge of an important clinical application of linguistics, as well as an awareness of the work of speech and language therapy. INTRODUCTION For a significant number of children and adults, speech and language skills are disordered to such an extent that they pose a significant barrier to effective communication. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists estimates that 2.5 million people in the UK have a communication disorder. Of this number, some 800, 000 people have a disorder that is so severe that it is hard for anyone outside their immediate families to understand them. In the US, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that one in every six Americans has some form of communication disorder. These large figures convey something of the extent of the burden of communication disorders on society as a whole. They should not, however, serve to distract from the personal impact of these disorders, an impact that is most often experienced as reduced quality of life as well as educational and occupational disadvantage.