Opiniile specialiștilor privind utilizarea umorului în terapia tulburărilor de limbaj și comunicare

Abstract

This paper addresses an important and innovative subject for the speech language therapy settings and it is the first research study which investigates specialists’ opinions on the use of humour in the Romanian speech and language therapy domain. The design of the study implies the development of a new questionnaire created during the research. Data were collected through this survey in an on-line format and thematic analysis method for data analysis was performed. In this research participants were SLTs (N=210) who work in different urban and rural areas in Romania. The research results highlight the presence of humour in SLTs settings and the interest in this field among specialists, suggesting that humour has notable implications in SLT’s domain. Access to humour for people with language impairment is dependent on: age; level of language development; specificity of language impairment; type of humour used. The main difficulties in understanding and using humour for children with language disorders are related to: understanding abstract linguistic concepts; vocabulary limits and constraints; poor executive functions; understanding social rules; accepting another person’s perspective. Humour can be incorporated into speech and language therapy activities in a variety of ways and used at different stages of the speech and language therapy approach.