The Study of Speech Processes - Softcover

Boucher, Victor J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1316636348 ISBN 13: 9781316636343

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2023

Synopsis

There has been a longstanding bias in the study of spoken language towards using writing to analyse speech. This approach is problematic in that it assumes language to be derived from an autonomous mental capacity to assemble words into sentences, while failing to acknowledge culture-specific ideas linked to writing. Words and sentences are writing constructs that hardly capture the sound-making actions involved in spoken language. This book brings to light research that has long revealed structures present in all languages but which do not match the writing-induced concepts of traditional linguistic analysis. It demonstrates that language processes are not physiologically autonomous, and that speech structures are structures of spoken language. It then illustrates how speech acts can be studied using instrumental records, and how multisensory experiences in semantic memory couple to these acts, offering a biologically-grounded understanding of how spoken language conveys meaning and why it develops only in humans.

About this title

About the Author

Victor J. Boucher is Senior Researcher and Professor of Speech Sciences at the Université de Montréal. His career work on the physiological processes of speech have led him to view human language as arising from constraints on motor-sensory systems and to a critical reappraisal of methods of language study.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1316636348
• ISBN 13: 9781316636343
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 330