What Is a Speech Impediment?

A speech impediment involves a disruption in normal speaking patterns: for example, lisps and stuttering. The disorder makes it difficult to communicate in the workplace, school or home. Speech impediments could also cause embarrassment, low self-esteem or a sense of loneliness. Therapy, phoniatrics or other treatments may help with speech disorders.

Articulation

• Many speech impediments deal with faulty articulation of words and their sounds. Lisps fall under this category. Children and adults who cannot articulate their Ls and Rs accurately might suffer from an articulation disorder as well. There are no clear reasons why some suffer from an articulation impairment. Some suggested causes are problematic bone structure, muscle shapes, cleft palate and teeth used to form speech sounds. Other causes link the issue to the brain or nerves that control speech muscles.

Voice

• Voice disorders arise when air passes improperly through the lungs, vocal chords and throat, nose, mouth and lips. This results in an abnormal quality to one's tone or pitch of voice. For example, a person unable to change the pitch of a word in order to ask a question might have a voice disorder. He speaks in a monotone, so listeners cannot decipher declarative statements from other types of sentences. Voice disorders are linked to many possible causes: cancer, cleft palate, nerve damage, growths and vocal overuse.

Disfluency

• Disfluency usually refers to stuttering. Repeating, prolonging or omitting words, sounds and syllables characterizes a fluency disorder. Stutterers often repeat the prefix of word as in "no-no-nobody." They may also prolong one letter sound within a word as in "brrrrrread." They also might add sounds to a word or sentence as in "we don't have...ummmm...salad." Many other abnormal disruptions in speech can be linked to stuttering such as pausing, tension in the voice and head jerking.

Language

• Language impairments disrupt a person's ability to express herself through communication. She often cannot get listeners to understand her needs or ideas. She might also have trouble reading, writing or spelling. Cluttering is a language disorder as it affects fluency. Unlike stuttering, however, clutterers' speech becomes disorganized when trying to communicate thoughts. A person who clutters might burst out a series of words or pause in a sentence as she tries to gather her thoughts. Her sentences may sound jerky. The cluttered speaker might even be unaware of the problem.