11 Page Anthropology Final Paper

Anthropology Assignment

Your name

Institutional Affiliations

Language Disabilities

Language disability is a major problem affecting many people across the world. Language disability affects people of all cultures. Language disability is a problem faced by both people who use sign and voice to communicate. Language disability is cause by brain damage. Language disability is presented in two forms including disordered speech and absence of speech. Disorder speech is referred to as dysphasia while absence of speech is referred to as aphasia. It is significant to understand language and language disability as it is an important part of our daily lives. For instance, anthropologists find it essential in general to learn the languages of the individuals they are studying, and they recognized early that the language themselves might provide valuable clues about the cultures and investigation.

Aphasia is a disordered language that results from brain damage. However, dysphasia is used to refer to disordered speech for damage to the language faculty while aphasia which means absence of speech refers to the cases in which the language faculties of the victim are destroyed completely. It has been known since ancient times that damage to the head can produce language disabilities. However, it was established more recently that brain damage affects users of sign language and in precisely the same way as it affects users of spoken language. This is therefore, a confirmation that the injury to the brain damages language, and not simply the ability to speak or perceive speech. Language disability therefore, refers to inability to speak or passive speech. Language disability is therefore different from speech defects, which simply result from damage to the nerves or muscles controlling the speech organs, and have no consequences for the language faculty itself.

Literature Review

According to Scarborough & Fowler (1993), it is assumed by numerous individuals that the physical basis of language is in the lips, the tongue, and the ears. However, this is not true because the deaf and mute individuals can fully posses a language. Individuals without ability to use their vocal cards may still be capable of understanding language and use its written forms. Just like spoken forms of language, human sign language whose basis is on the visible gesture instead of creating sound waves. However, the hand is not the basis of sign language just the same way the lips and the tongue are not the basis of spoken language. There are numerous instances of aphasics who lose both the ability to write as well as the ability to express themselves using sign language, yet they never lose manual dexterity in other tasks like tying their shoes or sipping with straw (Scarborough & Fowler, 1993). Language has all to do with brain and nothing to do with lips, tongue or ears. Hence, the mind is the language organ. To be precise, in nearly all healthy adults, the language faculty appears to be situated in specific areas of the left hemispheric cortex. The physical structure of the brain and its relationship to language production and understanding is studied by neurolinguistics- a special branch of linguistics (Scarborough & Fowler, 1993).

Scarborough & Fowler (1993) assert that language production can be affected by certain types of brain damage without actually removing language from the brain. For instance, a stroke that damages vocal muscles obviously may leave the abstract cognitive structure of language undamaged as illustrated by the fact that right hemisphere stroke victims usually comprehend language perfectly well and even write it perfectly with their right hand even though their speech maybe indistinct because of lack of muscle control. Research has also established that certain disorders that involve the subcortex may have linguistic side effects like in some cases of Tourette’s syndrome (Scarborough & Fowler, 1993). What happens when the area of the brain that control language are affected directly, and the abstract command of language of a person is affected can be described better by language disorders.

For instance, specific language impairment (SLI), one rare language disorder, appears to be genetic instead of a result of damage to a previously normal brain. Children are born with natural intuitions to acquire language, popularly referred to as LAD; nonetheless, a small number of children are born with an obvious defect in the LAD (Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting, 1997). Some families seem to have a genetic language acquisition disorder called SLI. Usually, children born with SLI have normal intelligence, maybe even high intellect however, as children; they are never capable of acquiring language naturally and with little or no effort. This is because they are born with their window of opportunity already closed to natural language acquisition. These kinds of children grow without succeeding to acquire steady grammatical patterns. As a result, they never command any language well including their mother tongues. Their speech in their narrative language as children and later as adults is a list of random grammatical errors. The errors are always random, not the set pattern of an interchange dialect (Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting, 1997). People who are affected with SLI are not capable of perfecting their skills through being taught; just the same way some individuals are not capable of being taught how to draw well or to see specific colors. This is therefore, the best evidence we have, which shows that language instinct which most children are born with is a skill quite different from general intelligence (Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting, 1997).

Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting (1997) state that since SLI happens in families and appears to have no environmental cause whatsoever, many people assume that it is caused by hereditary factors, possibly a mutant, recessive gene that interferes with or damages the LAD. However, the specific gene that causes SLI is not yet known. Human beings are born with the innate ability to acquire the very complicated, creative communication system that we refer to as language. Human beings are born with language instinct known as the language acquisition device (LAD) (Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting, 1997). The language acquisition device is very different from the innate reflex responses to stimuli such as laughter, crying or sneezing. The language instinct appears to be an exceptionally human genetic endowment. This is because almost all children that are exposed to language acquire it naturally almost as if by magic. Only in rare instances are children are born without the magical capability to absorb abstract syntactic patterns from their environment. These children are said to be suffering from SLI. It is believed that a mutant gene that disrupts the LAD is the cause of SLI. The language acquisition device itself, of course, is the outcome of the complicated interaction of numerous genes, not just one gene, and the system is simply short-circuited by the malfunction of some single key genes (Conti-Ramsden, Crutchley & Botting, 1997). For instance, just the same way a faulty carburetor wire can prevent an engine from running, but the engine is made up of more than one carburetor wire, human brain comprise of many thousands of genes- more than to any other single aspect of human body. Therefore, nobody has even started to isolate the certain set of genes that serve as the blueprint for the language organ.

According to Bashir & Scavusso (1992), learning to read also requires several skills. It is common to differentiate between two main aspects of reading (word recognition and reading comprehension). Word recognition consists of knowing how a word is pronounced. Good readers can do this by using multiple cues, but importantly they are able to use the conventions concerning the relationship between letter sequences and their pronunciation. Phonological processing abilities appear to play an important role in the development of this knowledge and the individual’s ability to recognize words. Decoding printed words, however, is not sufficient for reading competence. The reader also needs to be able to interpret the meanings of the printed text in a manner very similar to how utterances are interpreted when heard. The skills involved in this act of reading comprehension are very similar or the same as those used in listening comprehension (Bashir & Scavusso, 1992). 

Tomblin et al. (2000) argue that the natural capability of acquiring language usually reduced faster somewhere around the age of puberty. This therefore, means that there is a critical age for acquiring fluent native language. This phenomenon appears to be linked to the lateralization of language in the left hemisphere of most people- the hemisphere linked with the homolinear cognition like abstract reasoning and step by step physical tasks, and not to the right hemisphere that is linked with 3D partial acuity, musical and artistic capability. Children appear to be using both hemispheres to acquire language contrary to adults. That is, one can state that children acquire language in three dimensions while adults ought to learn language in two dimensions. Furthermore, the language organ in most adults is the perislyvian region of the left hemisphere cortex (Tomblin et al., 2000). There are numerous proofs, which show that language is normally kept in this specific region of the brain. This region is used for communication by human beings alone. Subcortex, the region which in human beings control same inborn reaction signals like laughter, desire, crying, fear, among others, seems to control the signal of the animals systems of communication.

According to Sun & Wallach (2014), spoken language competence involves several systems. Children must master a system for representing the meaning of things in their world. Children must also acquire a facility with the forms of language, ranging from the sound structure of words to the grammatical structure of sentences. Additionally, this knowledge must be joined with their social competence. Mastery of these skills, which occurs during the preschool years, will allow the child to function as a successful listener and speaker in many communication contexts. Much of this learning is accomplished without formal instruction, and what is known is largely tacit in nature. As preschoolers, children begin to develop an awareness of some of this knowledge. They will make words rhyme and they can manipulate parts of words, such as taking “baby” apart into two syllables, “ba” and “be” (Sun & Wallach, 2014). This ability to think about the properties of words is called phonological processing. There exists a substantial literature showing that early reading development in alphabetic languages such as English is dependent upon the integrity of phonological processing abilities. 

Specific language impairment has a strong genetic component just like all other developmental disorders. Researches have indicated that between 21% and 41% of children suffering from language impairments has an affected family member (Naseem & Benasich, 2003). Twin studies affirm that genetic factors are reflected by these numbers instead of the shared environment of the family members. The concept of a gene for language received considered attention in the 1990s with the finding of the KE family in London. 16 members of this three-generational household were diagnosed with a language disorder. All of the three affected people had a mutation of a gene on chromosome 7 called FOXP2 (Naseem & Benasich, 2003). The first excitement of the finding of language gene was muted by the successive research indicating that the gene regulated activities of other genes and had effects on the development of numerous organs such as brain systems involved in speech and language learning. It was also established that nearly all people with SLI have undamaged FOXP2 (Naseem & Benasich, 2003). However, the discovery does not decrease the impact of genetics on language disorders. It simply means that just like other developmental disabilities, language disorders are caused by several genes as well as environmental factors. It is believed by some researchers that more productive avenues of causal research look for the exact cognitive and linguistic deficiencies, which describe the language learning challenges encountered by people with SLI.

The effortless development of speech and language of the child is one of the most striking accomplishments of the preschool years. The preschool years represent a period of learning language with regard to spoken language development. Children are expected to use these newly developed language skills as tools for learning and highly for social negotiation when they enter school (Scott & Windsor, 2000). The significant function of written and spoken communication in the lives of school-aged children proposes that personal differences in these skills may involve risks in terms of wider psychological and academic competences.

References

Bashir, S. & Scavusso, A. (1992). Children with language disorders: Natural history and academic success. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 25, 1, 53-56.

Conti-Ramsden, G., Crutchley, A. & Botting, N. (1997). The extent to which psychometric tests differentiate subgroups of children with SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 40(4):765-777.

Naseem, C. & Benasich, A. (2003). A family aggregation study: The influence of family history and other risk factors on language development. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46 (2003): 261–72.

Scarborough, H. & Fowler, A. (1993). The relationship between language disorders and reading disabilities. J Speech Hear Res. 1993 Oct;36(5):948-58.

Scott, C., & Windsor, J. (2000). General language performance measures in spoken and written narratives and expository discourse of school-age children with language learning disabilities. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 43, 324–339

Sun, L. & Wallach, G. (2014). Language disorders are learning disabilities challenges on the divergent and diverse paths to language learning disability. Top Lang Disorders Vol. 34, No. 1, 2014, pp. 25–38

Tomblin, J., Zhang, X., Buckwalter, P. & Catts, H. (2000).The association of reading disability, behavioral disorders, and language impairment among second-grade children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 2000; 41(4):473-482.