I think about words a lot. That’s my job! In fact, a crucial part in both my work as a Speech and Language Therapy and Solution Focused practitioner. However, my thoughts for this blog were inspired by hearing of a novel word on the news. Have you heard of the term ‘Rizz’?? Any guesses?? Unless you are part of Generation Z or a keen adopter of internet slang you might not have added it into your vernacular.
For those who are interested, ‘Rizz’ has just been announced as word of the year by the Oxford University Press. What is the meaning captured within these four letters, you might ask? Apparently, it is internet slang for romantic appeal or charm and might be an abbreviated word for charisma.
All my blogs have a link somewhere to a song title and this is no exception. The Christians, a band who came to fame in the late 1980’s wrote a song called ‘What’s in a Word’. A very apt song title for my musings.
Words are amazing parcels containing and conveying meaning. They can be spoken, heard, written and read. Moving from the unfamiliar ‘Rizz’, let’s consider the more familiar word ‘coffee?’ This word is comprised of six letters, beginning with c, ending in e, made of two syllables, conveys a meaning of a hot drink, drunk from a mug or cup, which might be black, white, frothy and served with or without sugar. If the word ‘Coffee?’ was asked, (with a rising intonation), at 11 o’clock it might signal a time for a break from work, an opportunity to pop into a café or a chance to sit down for 10 minutes. There is a whole hidden meaning within the word. This hidden meaning is defined as the word’s semantics.
As with many things in life such as running water, toilet paper, fresh vegetables, we never stop to consider them until there is a supply problem. Similarly our use of language and communication is taken for granted, until a sudden or significant change brings its importance to the fore. Then we want to find out more, understand the reason for the change and hopefully find a way to remediate or rectify the problem.
Aphasia, the medical term for a language disorder, can be caused suddenly by a stroke or traumatic brain injury or can slowly manifest itself due to a progressive condition such as a Primary Progressive Aphasia (a language led dementia) or brain tumour. Depending on the area of brain affected, Aphasia can result in changes to some or all the following abilities:
- understanding a spoken word
- saying a word
- reading and understanding the written word
- writing
The aims of Speech and Language Therapy will depend on the person’s diagnosis. There is the potential for recovery and restoration of language following an acute brain injury such as stroke, whereas for progressive conditions the aim of therapy is to maintain language. There are several different therapy approaches used to help clients recover or to maintain their language.
Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) focuses on the meanings within the word. Through building up a clearer ‘semantic’ representation the person is better able to understand or retrieve the target word.
Phonological Component Analysis focuses more on the sounds within the word – the sounds it starts and ends with, what it rhymes with and number of syllables.
However, these may not work for everyone. I have clients who can tell you all about the word they are thinking of but just can’t say it. This can be so frustrating for people, affecting morale and self-esteem.
In this context, I was thinking about my late husband, Andy, who suffered a severe head injury when he was 29. His injury ultimately led me to train as a Speech and Language Therapist. During his rehabilitation one of the difficulties he encountered was being able remember and recall people’s names. He was a highly intelligent man and devised his own cognitive relay system. One example that remains vivid to me is his trying to remember the name of Lesley Garrett, the opera singer. She used to wear a red dress. Andy used the link describing her as the ‘Woman in Red’. The next step, ‘Red is a garish colour’. Garish then morphed to Garrett and then to Lesley Garret. Quite a laborious and mentally challenging route, but it worked for him.
Incorporating a ‘Cognitive Relay’ approach into my therapy toolkit does not happen often, as it can only be adopted by people who have adequate cognitive abilities. However, I have been working with a client recently who had reached the super frustrating stage of describing words he could not say. Taking the core vocabulary of people’s names and certain places in the UK and Europe I added the idea of cognitive relay. The approach brought new inspiration and motivation to both the client and his family. In addition, we had fun. Instead of describing microwave as “the thing in the kitchen that heats, has a door and a thing that goes round. You know for potatoes”. It became:
Synonym of micro = small/tiny and wave was a hand gesture
Likewise, Suffolk “the place on the other side of England” became, with the support of a map, “this one is north of this one, so begins with an S, Suffolk. These quick steps transferred to an increased ease of word retrieval, combined with a sense of success, achievement and a reduction in frustration.
Having asked the question ‘What’s in a Word?’ I have given a long explanation relating to Speech and Language Therapy. Should I be asked to provide a short answer, it would be ‘A lot’.