The Functional Evaluation of Language Disorders

Eleven contributions from a seminar held in April 1986 in the UK reflect current trends in linguistic analysis of speech pathology. Separate sections are concerned with the assessment of communication disorders from a functional perspective, aspects of remediation, and case study illustrations. From

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Linguistics is a rigorous discipline and many procedures have been developed or are being developed to analyse different aspects of language such as syntax, phonetics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. Only recently,however, have some of these analytical procedures been applied to the field of disordered language. Currently the focus is on analyzing the functional aspects of language disorders. This book brings together some of the most recent research in this area, covering the topics of assessment and remediation, and presenting a number of empirical case studies of children in schools or clinics which integrate these two themes. Taken as a whole, this collection of papers exemplifies the many dimensions of the functional approach in applying linguistics to clinical problems in speech and language pathology and therapy. By sharing these experiences with readers, this approach will become more widely understood and employed and developed further to the greater benefit of people suffering from communication handicaps.