LINGUIST List 15.1231

Sat Apr 17 2004

Review: Clinical Linguistics: Kent (2004)

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in.

If you are interested in leading a book discussion, look for books announced on LINGUIST as "available for review." Then contact Sheila Dooley Collberg at collberglinguistlist.org.

Directory

  • Steven B. Chin, The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders

    Message 1: The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders

     Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 23:35:20 -0400 (EDT)
    From: Steven B. Chin <schiniupui.edu>
    Subject: The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders


    EDITOR: Kent, Raymond D. TITLE: The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders PUBLISHER: MIT Press YEAR: 2004 Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-195.html

    Steven B. Chin, Indiana University

    If, as Chomsky (1965) proposes, ''linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community...'' (p. 3), then Raymond D. Kent's ''The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders'' (hereinafter ''the Encyclopedia'') addresses the status of the non-ideal speaker-listener and a heterogeneous speech community.

    The editor, Raymond D. Kent, is professor of communicative disorders at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Professor Kent specializes in speech production and the acoustics of speech, particularly in the area of speech intelligibility and speech quality affected by neurogenic disorders in children and adults. He is the author of Application of Research to Assessment and Therapy (Thieme-Stratton, 1985); Functional Anatomy of Speech, Language, and Hearing (Allyn and Bacon, 1990); The Acoustic Analysis of Speech (Singular Publishing Group, 1992); The Speech Sciences (Singular, 1997); and Clinical Phonetics (Allyn and Bacon, 2003); as well as over 100 journal articles and chapters. His knowledge on a wide range of topics is encyclopedic, making him a fitting editor for this volume.

    This 618-page volume contains 184 articles organized into four broad categories: voice, speech, language, and hearing. These loci of human spoken communication and disorders of spoken communication are standard and to an extent institutionalized, at least in the United States. First, they are the broad specialties generally reflected in faculties of academic departments in colleges and universities that deal with communication disorders. In name, at least, some of these concentrate on disorders (e.g., Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of Minnesota), some on general scientific aspects (Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University), and some on both (e.g., Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences and Disorders, University of Kansas). Second, as Kent points out, the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research (JSLHR), an official organ of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), has the three main editorial categories (including separate associate editors) of speech, language, and hearing. Third, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD, a U.S. federal entity, has three main research program areas: (1) Hearing and Balance; (2) Voice, Speech, and Language; and (3) Smell and Taste. Research pertaining to human communication are subsumed in the first and second areas.

    Note that in the foregoing, ''communication'' is by-and- large limited to spoken communication (and, to some extent, manual or signed) by humans. Written communication and reading disorders are generally not addressed in academic departments such as those just mentioned, in journals such as JSLHR, or in recent strategic plans for research emanating from the NIDCD. This concentration on spoken communication and disorders of spoken communication (with some exceptions, for example, ''Alexia'')is also evident in the content and organization of the Encyclopedia.

    Each of the 184 articles (95 on Voice, 127 on Speech, 179 on Language, and 154 on Hearing) is written by an expert in the relevant field, and each article is signed. Most authors are affiliated with academic institutions in North America, although a number of them are affiliated with various hospitals in the United States, including a fair number of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals. Specialists in linguistics, or at least phonetics, may be familiar with authors such as Louis Braida (''Frequency compression'') and Kenneth Stevens (''Voice acoustics''), but I suspect that many, if not most, of the authors of this volume will be unfamiliar to linguists and phoneticians. This is a real shame, because disorders of communication raise many theoretically interesting questions regarding the structure of language, particularly with respect to the limits on structural variation in ''ideal'' speaker- listeners and ''completely homogeneous'' speech communities.

    The editor indicates in the introduction that two further principles guided the content and structure of the Encyclopedia. First, each of the four categories of Voice, Speech, Language, and Hearing were balanced for articles dealing with Basic Science, Disorders (nature and assessment), and Clinical Management (intervention issues). Obviously, this is necessitated by the nature of the field of communication disorders, unlike a field like theoretical linguistics, which admits to not much more than ''Basic Science.'' This guiding typology is not explicit in the structure or content of each section. More explicit, however, is the separation of disorders in adults from disorders in children.

    Articles in the Encyclopedia are of relatively uniform text length and include black-and-white or gray-scale graphic materials (illustrations, graphs, spectrograms, etc.). For some reason, the lack of color illustrations always makes a work seem to me more scientific, which of course this one is. Each article is followed by a list of references cited in the article as well as, in most cases, a list of further readings. The reference lists of cited works contain for the most part primary literature appearing in journal articles, whereas the lists of further readings contain mostly secondary material, including books and book chapters.

    Within each of the sections Voice, Speech, Language, and Hearing, the articles are arranged alphabetically by their titles. The Encyclopedia contains a table of contents, listing, again in alphabetical order, the articles in each section. The table of contents really is a sine qua non for determining whether the Encyclopedia contains an article on a topic of interest. The reason for this is that the titles of the articles reflect what seems to be the very democratic approach of letting authors title their own articles. There are very straightforward titles, such as ''Stuttering,'' ''Discourse,'' and ''Presbyacusis.'' There are also some not-so-straightforward titles like ''Speech disorders secondary to hearing impairment acquired in adulthood'' and ''Phonological awareness intervention for children with expressive phonological impairments.'' These are, in fact, the titles of perfectly fine articles, but titles such as these make it difficult to follow specific lines of inquiry on the basis of the titles alone.

    For example, there are several articles in the Language section dealing with various aspects of aphasia. Some of these articles have titles that begin with the word ''aphasia,'' such as ''Aphasia: The classical syndromes'' and ''Aphasia, Wernicke's.'' However, there are also articles dealing with aphasia that are not as easy to find, such as ''Phonological analysis of language disorders in aphasia'' and ''Phonology and adult aphasia.'' The situation is due in large part, of course, to the tripartite set of concerns, quite legitimate concerns, of basic science, diagnosis, and clinical management. It is also helped very much by the inclusion of a name index and a comprehensive subject index. If one is looking for everything in the volume about aphasia, for example, it would probably be better to look in the index rather than in the table of contents.

    Given the participation of the editor and so many other experts on this project, it would have been nice to have an overview article for each of the sections on voice, speech, language, and hearing, outlining for each area its delimiting factors and major concerns. I mention this because, given my current line of research, I was interested to see what the Encyclopedia had to say about ''deafness.'' There was a main index heading for ''deafness'' that contained several subheadings, for example, ''in children, assessment and intervention for,'' ''language acquisition with for English,'' ''Scheibe,'' and so forth. But there was nothing like ''defined'' or ''characteristics of.'' I was reminded of the time in college when I found my neighbor, a geology major one month away from graduation, going frantically through all of his books and four years of class notes looking for, he told me, a good definition for the word ''rock.''

    I do not want the last two paragraphs to give any impression other than that I found this a great work of reference and a great work of science. It is both comprehensive and authoritative, and it will serve professionals in the field, as well as those in closely related fields, admirably.

    REFERENCES

    Chomsky, Noam. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

    Kent, Raymond D. (1985). Application of research to assessment and therapy. New York: Thieme-Stratton.

    Kent, Raymond D. (1997). The speech sciences. San Diego CA: Singular Publishing

    Kent, Raymond D., and Charles Read. (1992). The acoustic analysis of speech. San Diego CA: Singular Publishing.

    Perkins, William H., and Raymond D. Kent. (1990). Functional anatomy of speech, language, and hearing. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

    Shriberg, Lawrence D., and Raymond D. Kent. (2003). Clinical phonetics. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

    ABOUT THE REVIEWER

    Steven B. Chin is assistant scientist in otolaryngology- head and neck surgery in the Indiana University School of Medicine. His research examines atypical speech and phonological development, and his current projects deal with phonological development in children who use cochlear implants.