Allard, E. R., & Williams, D. F. (2008). Listeners' perceptions of speech and language
disorders. Journal of Communication Disorders. 41, 108-123.
As a person who has a speech impediment I take great interest in the perception of myself and others that also suffer from speech disorders or disfluencies. My research project for this class will somehow touch upon these stereotypes and I hope to carry this research into my senior comp project. The journal article "Listeners' perceptions of speech and language disorders" Allard and Williams, will serve as my basis for this research. In this article there was a comparison between five voice samples; no disorder, articulation disorder, fluency disorder, voice disorder, and language disorder. The different disorders were rated for several different factors, most notably employability and stress level. The obvious outcome of greater acceptability for the no disorder condition was proven, but the variability in approval of the other disorders were highly variable, and mostly unexplained. This particular study did not examine the effect of race, gender, age, or any other possible variable in the outcome. My hope is to replicate a similar research project taking into account some or all of these variables.
The very concept of a course entitled "Language and Social Cognition" deals with exactly that, the way users of language are perceived for a variety of different reasons. In class we tend to concentrate on conversation roles, word misuse, and other mishaps and nuances of spoken language. The study of speech disorders is the extreme end of the social cognition language spectrum but still very much applies how one is judged based on language skill and use in daily life.