The rejected voice: towards intersubjectivity in speech language pathology

Abstract

Speech language pathology needs to be linked with philosophy. Those with communication impairments encounter many problems when engaging in conversation with others. Does only the speaker(s) bear the responsibility to make their speech intelligible? In order to answer this question, I suggest that a Wittgensteinian approach offers original insights into speech as an intersubjective phenomenon. By exploring my experiences of having speech difficulties due to cerebral palsy, I shall argue that the unintelligibility of my voice is not simply my failure to achieve the able-spoken standard(s) of speech, but also the failure of others to recognise my utterance as speech. I hope to offer a different account of the voice that defines the human voice as intelligible speech – one that provides a more appropriate philosophical diversity for understanding the ethics of articulation.

Keywords:

• speech language pathology
• Wittgenstein
• intersubjectivity
• human voice
• intelligibility
• cerebral palsy

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Professor David Cockburn (University of Wales, Lampeter) and Dr Katherine J. Morris (Mansfield College, Oxford) for reading a very early version of this paper and for many useful comments that inspired the author’s thinking here. The author is grateful to Professor Kathleen Lennon (University of Hull) for her support during the writing of this paper. The author also thanks John Nicholls and Dr Michael Gillan Peckitt for their useful comments.

Notes

1. I am aware that there are some researchers working with the conversation analytic tradition (i.e. Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, Gail Jefferson (1974), and others) who consider that conversation analysis describes the systems, forms, and patterns of communication either in social institutions or in conversation. They have developed this perspective based upon the theory that communication should be cooperative and collaborative. This is also what this paper tries to explore. However, in this paper, I challenge the stereotypical assumptions that I have been facing in my day-to-day life, and focus on philosophical discussion about my own voice.

2. In his clinical and qualitative research of speech language pathology based on conversation analytic methods, Wilkinson (2008) pursues the idea of mutual responsibility for communication involving people with aphasia. He looks at social interactions involving people with aphasia and reveals the ways in which aphasia can impact on their construction of the world within their condition as well as how they can adapt the use of their linguistic and communicative resources (such as language, speech, gesture) to form their own communication skills. However, there are few works that are written about speech language pathology and the experience of having speech disorders from a first-person perspective.

3. Wittgenstein related Philosophical Investigations in numbered short passages. He used this method to refer to his passages back and forth. Thus, I follow his way of referring to his passage using numbered sections (§), not page numbers.

4. The ideas of Jacques Derrida are similar to Wittgenstein’s on the subject of speech, voice, and language (see, for example, Derrida 1989). However, Derrida’s ideas are too numerous and complex to be discussed here.

5. My disability does not just affect my speech, but more commonly it affects my facial expressions and the use of my hands in action. It is often difficult for me to develop good communication with those who meet me for the first time. I am aware of these issues about inter-corporeal communication. However, here, I want to emphasise more on vocal sounds that are produced by my body.

6. Tarshis et al. (2007, 475) write: ‘Despite adequate language skills, a child may not be able to communicate properly because of a speech disorder. Speech is divided into three components: fluency, voice, and articulation’.

7. In my article (Inahara 2011), I have argued that there are expressions, which are not’ linguistic’. For example, when someone is in pain, we can often recognise his/her pain through his/her body. The expression of pain is not necessarily made intelligible through spoken words.

8. Gilbert and Lennon (2005, 148–150) explore Beauvoir and Fanon’s concepts of the ‘Other’ and explain how women and black people internalise the dominant discourse of what is woman and what is black, and how the internalisation of the dominant discourse of the ‘Other’ influences the way in which they see themselves.

9. Overgaard (2007) has made this point about subjectivity in Wittgenstein and Other Minds. He has made similar arguments about subjectivity in the works of Husserl and Levinas in Subjectivity and Transcendence in his chapter ‘In Defence of Subjectivity: Husserl, Levinas and the Problem of Solipsism’ (Gron, Damgaard, and Overgaard 2007).