Communications Week 3

what is a communication disorder

impairment that adversely affects communication

Speech, language, or hearing

what is a communication difference

variations in communication shared by individuals within a religion or culture (can shift throughout life)

SLPs do not treat communication differences

what are dialects

grammatical variations: how we say the same meaning in a sentence differently (I’ve seen her today. vs. I done saw her today)

lexical: vocabulary (soda vs. pop)

no dialect is better than another

this is a communication difference, not a disorder

all speakers speak a dialect (some can have more variation than others)

what are accents

variations in pronunciation

example: bag in Minnesota

what is slang

highly informal words/expressions that don’t have a major role in a dialect

slang changes quickly while dialect doesn’t

not part of a particular dialect, slang has their own category

bilingual

bilinguals can be categorized based on when the languages are learned

20-23 percent in the US

simultaneous: exposed to two languages from birth

sequential: learn second language years after acquiring primary/native language

code switch between English and Spanish

multilingual

proficient in multiple languages

language

a set of symbols (sounds, letters, signs) and knowledge/rules about how to combine them into words and sentences to convey our thoughts and feelings

components of language

1. phonology

2. morphology

3. syntax

4. semantics

5. pragmatics

building blocks of language

language form

• phonology, morphology, syntax

language content

• semantics

language use

• pragmatics

phonology

the sound system of language

rules govern sound combinations

phonemes

sound contrasts that signal a meaning difference in words

one of the smallest things that contrasts meaning

daisy and lazy (/d/ and /l/ = phonemes)

minimal pairs

words that differ by one phoneme

these relates to phonology

syllables

phonemes combine to form syllables

all syllables have to have a vowel

building blocks of speech

phonemes and syllables

morphology

the structure of words

the smallest meaningful unit within a language

phonemes don’t have meaning, but they combine to make meaning

free morpheme

stands alone as a word

bound morpheme

must combine with other morphemes in the language to make a word

syntax

structure of sentences

rules for arranging words in sentences

used interchangeably with grammar

semantics

words and their meaning

lexicon or mental dictionary

knowing the words and symbols, but also knowing their meaning

expressive vs receptive vocab

expressive: words we use

receptive: words we understand (larger than expressive)

pragmatics

social conventions of language

greetings, turn taking, requesting, initiation, staying on topic, using nonverbal communication (e.g., facial expressions, eye contact), humor, literal vs. non-literal use, sarcasm, etc.

idiom

non-literal meaning

“Getting cold feet”