Talandet som levd erfarenhet. : En studie av fyra barn med Downs syndrom

Sammanfattning: This thesis presents a study of children’s speech. The children have Down syndrome (DS). Often the speech of children with DS is hard for other people to understand. The aim of the study is to try a new way of describing these children’s speech. My perspective reflects an ambition to conceive the children as active, speaking subjects.In phenomenology human beings are regarded as always being intentional. The phenomenological perspective on intentionality views articulation as intentional, even though we normally experience it as “automatic”. This seemed to be a fertile perspective for this study, where the central focus is on the intentionality in the speech, i.e. the relation between the speaker and his or her speech while speaking. I have drawn mainly on Merleau-Ponty’s views on speech.The speech of four children 6–7 years old was studied. The children were videotaped together with an adult in a specific situation (while naming pictures of familiar objects). The children’s speech was transcribed phonetically and some of the words were subjected to acoustic analysis. The main features of the situation were noted down. By means of the acoustic analysis, it was possible to study particular words in minute detail. These words were interpreted in relation to the context in which each utterance was made.The four children all differ individually in their speaking strategies. The children’s speaking strategies may be described as flexible or rigid, diversified or undiversified. Within the child’s total expression there is a part which, in my opinion, the child could reach and develop. In my study, I introduce the terms the accessible speech or the accessible expression for that part of the child’s expression. By the terms the visible speech or the visible expression, I have tried to capture the part of the expression which I conceive that the child is capable of approaching as an object.The terms accessibility and visibility involve the notion of intentionality; the speech is accessible or visible to someone. The children show us what is within reach for them. I believe that a good starting point for supporting the children’s speech development is the point where they reveal accessible and/or visible speech.