Speech and Language Disorders

Communication is often taken for granted.  Most of us learned to talk at a very early age and don’t remember the process of learning how to speak.  However, there are medical conditions and disease processes that can significantly impair the ability to speak and communicate effectively.     These include but not limited to strokes and other brain injuries, dementia, progressive and degenerative diseases of the central nervous system (such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, “Lou Gherig’s Disease”), and certain cancers of the head and neck.

The terms “speech” and “language” can be confusing.  In some cases, although there is no trouble in choosing the correct words, the process of speaking clearly and precisely is affected.  For example, the speech is  “slurred” or “sluggish.”  This happens when muscles involved in speaking become weakened from some condition, a disease or are surgically altered.  In the purest sense, this is a “speech disorder.”   In others cases, however, there is a loss of access to the language system when there is difficulty turning thoughts into words.  This causes difficulty choosing the correct term for common objects or in selecting the words to make up a sentence.  This describes a “language disorder.”  The two are not mutually exclusive and frequently there is some combination of both speech and language deficits.  The following list defines the most common terms associated with speech and language disorders.