Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

A-Z 575
drawn. Many stammerers experience fluctuating periods of fluency or have fluency
behaviour associated with specific situations or environments.
Most stammerers are able to increase their fluency with techniques taught by speech
therapists, although the maintenance of fluency is often difficult. Discussion of the
stammerer’s perception of him or herself and his or her speech forms an important
component of most programmes. The main influence on approaches to treatment are from
psychology (see, for example, Ingham, 1984). There has been a limited influence from
linguistics, although the discipline of phonetics is becoming increasingly influential with
the expanding availability of instrumental measurement of speech production.
DISORDERS OF LANGUAGE
Disorders of language may be acquired as the result of disease or injury; associated with
other major deficits in, e.g., hearing or cognition; or, as in developmental disorders, occur
when the child fails to develop language according to expectations, notwithstanding
normal development in other areas. The term language disorder is used as a broad
category to include failure to develop, impairment, or loss of any level of language
production and includes understanding of language (see also LANGUAGE
PATHOLOGY AND NEUROLINGUISTICS). Developmental language disorders in
children will be considered first.
Children may fail to develop age-appropriate syntax, phonology, lexicon, or
pragmatics or may fail to develop the expected understanding of language while
demonstrating other nonverbal cognitive skills. The extent of delay varies. For some
children the delay may be slight and quickly resolved, for others the delay may also affect
written language and problems with reading and/or spelling may persist for many years,
while for yet other children the gap between their expected and actual linguistic abilities
is so severe as to prevent them from benefitting from mainstream education. There is
limited special educational provision for this small group of handicapped children in the
United Kingdom, but in the USA these children are more likely to be integrated into
mainstream education.
From time to time efforts are made to distinguish ‘delayed’ speech from ‘deviant’
speech. In practice, speech may resemble that of a younger child in terms of grammatical
structures and the repertoire of sounds used, but there are very often differences that arise
from the child’s greater experience of the world and the influence of other aspects of
development. There may also be differences in language use. Certain categories of
handicapped children may produce characteristic speech that is both qualitatively and
quantitatively different, for example psychiatrically disturbed children, but there seems to
be little evidence that this is common for other categories of handicap, e.g. mental
handicap.