Speech in Language
A child’s speech disorder is important to their family in large part because caregivers intuitively grasp that speech plays a central role in language and, through language, in human communication. Knowing this, they may worry with some justification that their child’s speech disorder could exclude or limit them from enjoying and participating in some of life’s most important activities. To carry out our work, we need to study in more depth what families correctly intuit about the importance of speech.
Phonology
In this book, phonology is the knowledge of language rules that underlie speech. Examples of phonological elements include distinctive features, phonemes, syllables, stress, and intonation. The essential characteristic of these and other elements in the phonological system is that they lack meaning. To illustrate, s, t, and m have no meaning in themselves, but other language systems recruit them to create meaning. For example, combined with other consonants and vowels, they make words such as sun, see, tea, toe, me, and myth.
Consonants, vowels, syllables, and intonation may seem mundane, relatively insignificant aspects of language, but they make the rest of language possible. Because the foundation of our language is meaningless sounds that represent nothing, words can create a nearly infinite number of different meanings, allowing us to express whatever meanings are important in our social and physical environments.
Phonology Means Nothing
To appreciate the role phonology plays in human language, imagine it organized differently. For example, pretend that each consonant and vowel, instead of being meaningless, is associated with a meaning. For example, suppose s represents anger, w
represents sadness, and t represents touch. If this were so, s could not appear in sweet or sun, or other words, since s always represents anger.
If phonology had a similar organization, humans could express very few different meanings. In fact, the world of different things to talk about would closely equal the number of sounds we could produce. To illustrate, if our vocal tracts could pronounce 120 different sounds, we could talk about approximately 120 different things one thing per sound.
You can perform a quick thought experiment to see just how restricted life would be if you could only talk about 120 things, one per each sound your vocal tract could produce. Counting to 100 uses up 100 of your 120 meanings. The alphabet of an English-like language uses 26 meanings, so you’re already over your limit of 120. And you haven’t even gotten to colors, grammatical markers, the weather, favorite and dangerous foods, family members, flowers, or features of the landscape.
And then comes the real problem of the limit to 120 meanings: How do you name something new in your environment? For example, suppose you and your family live in a little house on a dangerous animal-filled savanna (I don’t know why you are living there let’s just say you are) and a new predator enters your area. You would like to be able to name it in fact, your survival may depend on doing this, so you can warn others in your family of the animal’s approach. To name it, some other meaning would need to go to keep to your limit of 120 meanings. What do you choose to drop? Only count to 99? Drop the first letter of your alphabet? Discard the name of a family member? I’m sure you see the point: Human life with such limitations would be impossible.
De ning Ourselves
In no small measure, human adaptability depends on possessing a language system that allows the expression of an almost infinite number of meanings using a small set of sounds. This allows humans to enter a new environment and create vocabulary to
describe the place in which they find themselves. This has allowed humans to spread out across the world and flourish in such diverse places as deserts, mountains, forests, and tundra. Just as easily, phonology would allow us to live on a satellite, the moon, or a distant planet.
Indeed, phonology is so critical to language and being human that we could define ourselves in the following way:
Humanity is the species whose cornerstone of communication means nothing.
That is, humanity is the species whose language includes phonology.
Speech in Human Communication
Through language, speech plays a central role in human communication. To see this, think of all the things we could not accomplish, or could only accomplish with much greater effort, if speech did not exist to convey language. As summarized in Table 1–1, speech facilitates talking, thinking, being part of a group, and transmitting knowledge from generation to generation.
TABLE 1–1. Four Types of Communication Facilitated by Speech
Type of Communication
Talk
Thought
Groups
Cultural transmission
Definition
Communication between persons
Communication with oneself
Communication within and between groups
Communication between generations
Talk (Interpersonal Communication)
When someone thinks about the role of speech in communication, they usually think of talk, which is the way people typically communicate with each other (Carroll, 2008). Stand back and watch a conversation. A person’s mouth opens, emitting a volley of sound. Then another person’s mouth opens and returns a sound volley. As Fillmore (1975) described years ago, the volleys continue, back and forth, back and forth, conveying ideas, memories, and emotions.
Approximately 7,099 different languages exist in the world, a remarkably large number considering they all belong to a single species with the same cognitive system (Ethnologue, 2017). In each of these languages, the primary means of communication is the exchange of sound. Many languages have written systems in addition to spoken ones, allowing the translation of speech into graphic mediums. Modern inventions such as the telephone, computer, film, and television have extended the realm of speech to transmission through electricity.
Of course, speech is not the only form through which humans convey language. Other means include sign language, in which the volleys are gestures rather than sounds (Sacks, 1989; Stokoe, 2005). Although the gestural volleys of sign language are as fascinating to study as those of sound, that intriguing topic lies outside the purview of this book. Nor does this book address fascinating gestural communication systems such as eye gaze and stance, though those forms of communication are rich and increasingly well researched topics (Burgoon et al., 2011).
Thought (Intrapersonal Communication)
In addition to its central role in talk, speech plays at least three other pivotal roles in human communication. Speech turned inward conveys thought (Kozulin, 1990). Internal speech and images allow humans to regulate their own behavior, make plans, and reason (Huettig & Harsuiker, 2010). Indeed, sometimes a person
does not turn their speech all the way inward and you can hear them muttering, sometimes in whole sentences, though more often in short snatches.
If you introspect, you can mentally overhear speech in your head, perhaps whispering dinner possibilities or planning what you will say to a friend this evening. Or, if you are preparing for an argument you expect with a significant other, the little whisper allows you to play both sides of the projected conflict, a sort of mental script like this:
Mental Script:
Me: You don’t treat me well!
Significant Other: I do too!
Me: We never go out to dinner anymore.
Significant Other: We do too. We went to dinner on your birthday.
Oops. They’ re right. Revise the script.
Revised Mental Script:
Me: You don’t treat me well!
Significant Other: I do too.
Me: We never go out to dinner anymore, except on my birthday.
Significant Other: Well, I don’t have much money.
Me: That’s no excuse.
Good! Much better outcome.
You may notice that inner speech requires some mind reading. In the above example, “me” not only plans their own utterances, but also mind reads what “Significant Other” likely will reply. The scientific name for this mind-reading trick is theory of mind, which essentially means that we act on the assumption that other
people have minds, thoughts, wishes, and motivations, just as we do (Firth & Firth, 2005). Theory of mind guides our use of language; difficulties with theory of mind are part of many different communication disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (Schmaafsma et al., 2015).
Lastly, you may notice that inner speech takes a person out of the moment in which they live and projects them elsewhere in the example, “me” projects themself into the future. A goal of many meditation practices is to turn off the inner voice so a person may experience more of the now (Lazar et al., 2000). It is not easy!
To see this, try turning off your inner speech and look around the room in which you are reading. The voice disappears after a few moments, but soon returns, a little whisper. You can turn it off again, but for most people it soon returns, taking you from the moment to other places.
Groups (Intergroup Communication)
Speech also plays a central role in forming group identity (Gumperz, 1972; Wolfram, 2004). Being a native speaker of a language is a common way people view themselves as belonging to a group. For example, persons born in Spain may group themselves as native Spanish speakers in contrast to those with foreign accents that show they are nonnative Spanish speakers.
Shared speech characteristics of a dialect offer another means through which people place themselves in groups. In addition to dialects based on regions, people also may share a dialect based on social relationships, called sociolects (Wolfram, 2004). Cockney English is a famous example of a dialect that is both regional and based on social class.
Race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, and gender all offer people other ways to build a group identity based on shared speech characteristics. To give just one example, teenagers with similar interests and outlooks may develop a slang (a temporary age- and interest-based dialect) to differentiate themselves from those
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Munich, strange story of delegate from, 6 revolutionary scenes in, 84
Nansen, Dr., 81
National Council for Civil Liberties, 151
National Peace Council, author as representative of, 60
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Conference of, at Budapest, 70 Peace efforts of, 75
Nationalists, German, author and, 162-165
Nazarov, 196
Nemec, Dr., at Berne, 98 at Lucerne, 98
Nicolai, Professor, “Biology of War,” by, 68 escape to Denmark of, 69 personality of, 68
Nicolaivich, Grand Duke, author and palace of, 192, 221
Northcliffe, Lord, German Radicals and, 172
Ochme, Herr, 166
Ogenheim, Baron, 135
Pacifist, author as, 19
Pallenberg, Max, 172
Paris, delegates to Berne in, 7, 8 dirty condition of, after Armistice, 8, 9
Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress, delegates of, at Berne, 3
Passports, difficulties of obtaining, 55, 56, 96 examination of, 5, 13, 106, 107
Peabody, George Foster, author and, 50
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Peace Conference, Paris as “ill-chosen seat of,” 8
Peace ship, Henry Ford’s, 47 Miss Addams and, 79
Peasant v. Town worker, problem of, in Central Europe, 121
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Persia, Bolsheviks and, 149
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Poti, author’s visit to, 221
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Radek, 25 a Jew, 181 and bourgeois institutions, 59 and Treaty of Sèvres, 149 on Bolshevization of Georgia, 150
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Redmond, John, 267
Red Terror, in Hungary, 175 in Russia, 35
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Reinhardt, Max, 187
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Rhine, The, author and, 173
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Royden, Miss Maude, 75
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Russell, G. W., author and, 242
Russell, Hon. Bertrand, 65, 70
Russia, author’s views on, 139 et seq. democratic programme of, 147 Red Terror in, 35
Russian Revolution and Third International, 130
Russo-Georgian Treaty, 225
Russo-Polish Treaty, 148
Samuel, Sir Herbert, 187
Sanger, Miss Sophie, 3
Sapieha, Princess, 180
Savery, Mr., 133
“Save the Children” Fund, author as member of executive of, 155 conference at Geneva, 131 foundation and work of, 61 organization of, 136 relief work of, 271 work of, in Vienna, 114
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British Labour Party decides for, 130 conference of, at Berne, 1 et seq. conference of, at Geneva, 136 countries represented at Berne, 30 delegation to Georgia from, 175, 189 et seq. Executive Committee at Berne, 30 foundation of, 130
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Teleki, Count, and ex-Emperor Charles, 69 author and, 69, 70
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Third International, Bolsheviks and, 130 efforts of, to absorb Second, 130 establishment of, 35, 36 influence of, 166 Strasburg Conference and, 133
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Tseretelli, M., 175, 197
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Bristol Hotel at, 111, 112
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