Clinical Phonetics

Clinical phonetics is the interaction of the science of speech with disordered speech data. This interaction is bidirectional in that the tools of phonetics can be applied to the description of disordered speech, but also the characteristics of speech disorders and needs of therapists can inform developments in phonetic description and instrumentation. Clinical phonetics provides tools to clinicians to understand and describe a wide range of disordered speech. As described in this entry, it does this through transcription and instrumentation and at the levels of articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. Students training to be Speech–Language pathologists need a good grounding in clinical phonetics, especially since much of the instrumentation is becoming more affordable and more portable.