Corrective demonstrations and embodied resources for modeling speech sounds in aphasia speech-language therapy

Abstract

This paper analyzes the way speech-language therapists instruct and correct aphasic speakers regarding the pronunciation of linguistic items and model pronunciation through auditory, verbal, visual, and tactile resources, thus configuring it as an embodied, multisensory experience. The data analysis shows that correction of a patient's productions is first initiated by therapists audibly, through repetition of the target item with specific prosodic features, such as loudness and length. When this type of cue proves to be ineffective, therapists perform instructions and corrective demonstrations through visual and haptic cues: By using their body as an “instructional tool,” they represent, with gestures and facial expressions, features of the target sound. They can also touch a patient's face to help them to correctly realize specific articulatory movements. This paper focuses on the hierarchy of embodied resources that are mobilized by therapists, in an ordered and incremental way, to model pronunciation. Moreover, it highlights the methods used to enhance patients' visual attention toward embodied resources and solve issues of bodily coordination. More broadly, this paper highlights the complex embodied nature of speaking and, by focusing on a pathological situation and a therapeutic setting, shows what participants treat as relevant for producing speech sounds in interaction.