ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity
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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• The type of English spoken in the US is commonly
  referred to as American English (AE).
• In the US, speakers of English may be categorized
  into one of three basic groups on the basis of
  accent or dialect.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• The first group consists of person who were born
  in another country and learned their first
  language(s) before they acquired English.
• Their English may be accented by their first
  language(s).
• This group could include persons born in other
  countries where students learn English while in
  school.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• The second group consists of person born in the
  United States who learned their first language(s)
  before they acquired English.
• This group could include children born to parents
  who speak a language(s) other than English in the
  home and whose children then learn English in
  school, or children who are learning multiple
  languages, including English, simultaneously.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• The third group consists of persons born in the
  United States or other countries whose only
  language is English.
• Their development of English is affected by
  region, status, style, ethnicity, age, gender,
  life experiences, and communication models,
  resulting in their use of a dialect of English,
  which may or may not be viewed as a nonstandard
  dialect of English.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• Examples of this third group would include, but
  are not limited to, individuals who speak
  Appalachian English, one of the New York
  dialects, African American English, standard
  English, British dialect, southern English, and
  English influenced by some other non-English
  languages such as Spanish.
• In reality, all speakers have accents and
  dialects because to speak a language is to speak
  some dialect of that language.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• Although the term dialect is intended to be a
  neutral label to refer to any variety of language
  which is shared by a group of speakers (Wolfram,
  1991), the existence of the various dialects is
  the result of historical, social, linguistic, and
  geographical factors, which may bear on their
  perception as socially prestigious (standard) or
  not.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• Because language issues have impacted the country
  in much the way that civil rights issues affected
  policy after the 1960s, the American
  Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA, 1983),
  unanimously approved the position paper on social
  dialects prepared by the Committee on the Status
  of Racial Minorities after a decade of study.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• It is the position of ASHA that no dialectal
  variety of English is a disorder or a
  pathological form of speech or language.
• Each social dialect is adequate as a functional
  and effective variety of English.
• Each represents a legitimate rule-governed
  language system comprised of phonological,
  morphological, syntactic, semantic, lexical,
  pragmatic, and suprasegmental features.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• Each serves a communication function as well as a
  social solidarity function.
• Each dialect maintains the communication network
  and the social construct of the community of
  speakers who use it.
• Furthermore, each is a symbolic representation of
  the geographic, historical, social, and cultural
  background of its speakers.

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ASHAs Position on Language Diversity

• However, society has adopted the linguistic
  idealization model that standard English is the
  linguistic archetype.
• Standard English is the linguistic variety used
  by government, the mass media, business,
  education, science, and the arts.
• Therefore, there may be nonstandard English
  speakers who find it advantageous to have access
  to the use of standard English.

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Difference versus Disorder

• A speaker of any language or dialect may exhibit
  a language disorder unrelated to his or her use
  of the native dialect.
• One must distinguish between those aspects of
  linguistic variation that represent regular
  patterns in the speaker's dialect from those that
  represent true disorders in speech, language, and
  hearing.

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Difference versus Disorder

• It is indeed possible for dialect speakers to
  have linguistic disorders within the dialect.
• The SLP must have certain competencies to
  distinguish between dialectal differences and
  communicative disorders.
• These competencies include
• recognizing all American English dialects as
  rule-governed linguistic systems

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Difference versus Disorder

• understanding the rules and linguistic features
  of American English dialect(s) represented by
  their clientele and
• being familiar with nondiscriminatory testing and
  dynamic assessment procedures.
• Once the difference/disorder distinction has been
  made, the SLP treats only those features or
  characteristics that are true errors and not
  attributable to the dialect.

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Elective Clinical Services

• Aside from traditionally clinical service
  delivery, the SLP may also be available to
  provide elective clinical services to nonstandard
  English speakers who do not present a disorder.
• For these individuals, the SLP provides the
  desired competency in standard English without
  jeopardizing the integrity of the individuals
  first dialect.

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Elective Clinical Services

• The approach of the elective service must be
  functional and must emphasize the appropriateness
  of the first and second dialects for different
  contexts.
• ASHAs position statement has similar
  implications for bilingual individuals.
• The SLP may provide elective clinical services to
  the bilingual individual seeking to acquire a
  more standard production of English.

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Qualifications for Clinical Service Delivery

• It is a prerequisite for the SLP to have a
  thorough understanding and appreciation for the
  community and culture of the nonstandard English
  speaker.
• The SLP must have a thorough knowledge of the
  linguistic rules of the particular dialect or
  languages of the bilingual speaker.

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Qualifications for Clinical Service Delivery

• For the bilingual speaker who exhibits a speech
  or language disorder within his or her dominant
  language, speech or language intervention would
  be indicated.
• However, treatment should only be initiated after
  a comprehensive evaluation of the dominant
  language by an appropriately trained SLP has been
  undertaken.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• Demographic changes anticipated over the next
  decade indicate a need for increasing numbers of
  professionals with the linguistic diversity to
  provide services to those individuals with
  communication disorders from CLD populations.
• Speakers with accents and dialects must also be
  permitted full participation in the professions
  of speech-language pathology and audiology.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• In the past, many communication sciences and
  disorders education programs and some employers
  have imposed a monocultural perspective regarding
  linguistic diversity.
• Many educational programs have discouraged
  speakers of certain nonstandard linguistic
  varieties from majoring in communication sciences
  and disorders.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• Other programs have not permitted or have
  restricted clinical practicum experiences for
  students who speak certain nonstandard
  linguistic varieties of English.
• Still others have required student enrollment as
  a client at the university clinic to eradicate
  accents or dialects, or have reassigned such
  students based solely on negative attitudes and
  prejudices of clients and clinical supervisors.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• In many of these cases, the ability of students
  with accents and dialects to provide clinical
  services or write clinical reports have been
  called into question.
• Similar negative practices have been demonstrated
  by some employers.
• These behaviors are contrary to fostering and
  celebrating the cultural diversity that enhances
  the profession.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• The same position that states that dialects among
  our clients are not to be considered as
  disordered speech and language governs the same
  inclusiveness and acceptance of diversity among
  practitioners and students from CLD populations
  who may not speak standard English.

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CLD Professionals in the Discipline

• SLPs and audiologists, as well as the consumers
  they serve, all speak with accents and/or
  dialects that reflect when, where, how, and with
  whom and from whom they learned language.

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Language Diversity and Discrimination

• The presence of an accent and/or dialect may make
  a person vulnerable to stereotypical judgments,
  prejudices, and sometimes discrimination because
  some accents or dialects are deemed more
  acceptable than others.
• Nonetheless, members of ASHA, in the conduct of
  their professional activities, are urged not to
  discriminate against persons who speak with an
  accent or dialect.