Specialized Abstract Term in Speech and Language Pathology

Speech Pathologists, like other social scientists, maintain a lexicon specific to their profession. The job of a Speech Pathologist is to treat physical and/or cognitive deficits/disorders resulting in difficulty with verbal communication. Many such professionals work with young children and must regularly explain why certain children lack the ability to convey thoughts and information through speech. Speech therapists often must treat patients that have trouble with articulation, intonation, rate, and intensity.

Based upon the nature and severity of the disorder, common treatments might include instructive or repetitive practice and drilling and the use of audio-visual aids. Articulation, for instance, is the process by which sounds, syllables, and words are formed when one's tongue, jaw, teeth, lips, and palate alter the air stream coming from the vocal folds. This is important in the field of speech pathology because a spoken message may be lost due to improper articulation.

Articulation is best demonstrated; if a child was unfamiliar with the word, one could repeat sentences in articulate and inarticulate English and then ask he or she notices the differences. It could also be of help to convey humorous stories in which poorly articulated words led to disaster and chaos. It is easy to convey messages to children through allegory; it allows one to follow a concept as that interests them that they might study.

It is easy to teach children the concept of 'mumbling' and then to explain to them that articulate people are the antithesis of people that mumble. Intonation is one of the chief non-textual methods by which people convey information in communication. It is also the intonation of words that we are able to ask questions and to indicate various levels of emotion, intensity or sincerity in our speech. This is also best portrayed using examples, because the meaning of intonation is not successfully conveyed to text.

A small minority of the population suffers from Ossberger's syndrome, which precludes them from understanding non-verbal communication. Children are often dramatic in their intonations, and this can be used to portray the nature and origins of intonation. Unfortunately, this is difficult to people with a specific knowledge of speeh. Such nebulous explanations as "when your voice goes up and down," or "the way you say the things you say" are too nebulous.

It can be easily understood that people have different abilities to understand each other's attitudes from what they say based on the medium, but intonation can always be gathered from what you hear. For instance, shouting is a form of intonation, and questions are a form of a sentence that feature intonation. It would be necessary to point out why it is that text must feature marks such.