Communication Disorders

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Communication Disorders
Communication Disorders encompass a wide range of impairments, mainly dealing with “receiving, understanding, and expressing information, feelings, and ideas” (Turnbull 400). Normally, people possessing one or more of these disorders have problems with language, speech, or hearing (Kid 1). With new developments in education and methods of therapy, many of these disorders can be improved. Two of the three major types of communication disorders will be discussed within this paper. These include the areas of language and speech.
Exceptional Lives defines a speech disorder as “the difficulty to produce sounds as well as disorders of voice or fluency of speech.” An individual with speech problems may have trouble following directions, speaking at a normal pace, and exhibiting correct syntax and articulation (Kid 1). The typical human is able to learn to speak with no problem, and the progression is somewhat miraculous. While people are unable to document or study the norms of speech development, the abnormalities can and have been thoroughly studied. Some speech impairments include articulation (a speaker’s production of individual or sequenced sounds), voice disorders, and fluency disorders (Turnbull 404-5). Voice disorders reflect “pitch, duration, intensity, resonance, and vocal quality (Turnbull 405),” while Fluency disorders “are characterized by a disruption in the smooth flow or expression of speech” (Health 1).
Language development is another miraculous, yet “complex”, facet of life. The five components of language development include “phonology (sound system), morphology (word forms), syntax (word order and sentence structure), semantics (word and sentence meanings), and pragmatics (social us of language)” (Turnbull 406). To be considered as a speaker of any particular language, a person must possess two distinguishing skills: stimulus and response. If a person u...