Publisher's Synopsis
Phonetics is normally defined as being the 'scientific study of speech sounds'. The different aspects of this definition can be examined in turn. If phonetics is the scientific study and description of speech sounds, then clinical phonetics is the application of this approach to the speech sounds used by speakers with a speech problem. Of course, there is a wide range of speech problems, and each has its own effect on a speaker's abilities. Speech sounds include all aspects of sound used in speech, and this includes vowel sounds, consonant sounds, and aspects of speech such as intonation and rhythm, loudness and tempo. These include hestitation noises, annoyance or encouragement clicks, sighs, and so on. Although it is clear that these sounds do not operate in the same way as the main linguistic sound units referred to above, they often do have some kind of meaning attached to them, and linguists studying the mechanics of conversation usually include these sound types in their analyses. Modern phonetics is partly interested in providing descriptions of speech data using as scientific an approach as possible. The move towards a greater use of instrumental techniques does not mean, however, that traditional impressionistic transcription using phonetic symbols is about to be abandoned. There are many instances when phoneticians do not have immediate or easy access to instrumentation, and indeed, when reading off results from many types of phonetic equipment, it is often easiest to state these in terms of phonetic symbols. Investigations in Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics is concerned with the interaction between the study of speech and language on the one hand, and disorders of speech and language on the other. The text covers different aspects of speech and language pathology and it offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the complexity and the emerging importance of the field, by identifying and re-examining, from different perspectives.
