Paediatric and Educational Issues 2 73

Are your minimal pairs too neat? The dangers of ‘ phonemicization’ in phonology therapy

HILARY GARDNER University of York

ABSTRACT To ‘phonemicize’ (Howard, 1993) inuolues tidying up the phonetic de- tails of a child’s utterances in order to fit the tokens into neat phonemic categories which provide clear meaningful contrasts for a therapy programme. Research has highlighted the dangers inherent in such treatment of the child’s phonological out- put. One danger of this approach is that, as therapists, we can ouerlook vital infor- mation regarding the child’s true system of contrasts as we only consider the per- spectiue of the listener rather than the speaker. This can haue a negatiue effect on the efficacy of therapy undertaken. The solution to this is accurate, detailed pho- netic transcription and analysis of the child’s output (Grunwell, 1987). This paper presents euidence of how such ‘phonemicization’ can work against the aims of a therapy programme when the minimal pairs being used, supposedly to contrast the child error with the target uersion, are not an accurate reflection of the actual child output. The euidence comes from detailed qualitatiue analysis of filmed interaction between therapists and phonologically disordered children working together. The techniques are those of conuersation analysis (CA) as derived from the work of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1 974), and Atkinson and Heritage (1 984). This euidence is presented in the form of extracts which show the therapist responding to child error on a target phone by ‘redoing‘ (Tarplee, 1989) the child’s uersion inaccurately, but in a way that fits in with therapy design. The child routinely fails to repair the error in such cases. Where the redoing reflects the child’s output more accurately than appropriate repair can be shown to take place. CA shows that the way we plan and implement therapy, based upon a theoretical notion, becomes explicit through the clinical interaction. Careful phonetic assessment should lead to a therapy programme that more accurately reflects the child’s difficulties and to more appropriately handled repair sequences that help the child address his error effectively. This, in turn, should enhance the therapy process.

REFERENCES

Atkinson J M , Heritage J (1984). Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Grunwell P (1987). Clinical Phonology (second edition). Beckenham: Croom Helm. Howard SJ (1993). Articulatory constraints on a phonological system: a case study of a cleft palate child. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 7,299-317. Sacks H, Schegloff FA, Jefferson G (1974). A simple systematics for the organisation of turntaking in conversation. Language 50, 696-735. Tarplee C (1989). Confirmation and repair: an interactional analysis of re-doing sequences in adult-child talk. Proceedings of the Child Language Seminar, Hatfield Polytechnic, 141-156.