Understand key terms and concepts in speech-language pathology. Whether you’re a seasoned clinician or just starting out, this glossary is here to support your learning and practice.
Rhotacism is a term for difficulty or inability to properly produce the /r/ sound (the “rhotic” consonant). Individuals with rhotacism often substitute another sound (such as /w/) for /r/ or produce a markedly distorted /r/, affecting the clarity of words containing /r/.
A Speech Generating Device is an electronic communication aid that produces spoken output, enabling individuals who cannot speak to communicate using synthesized or recorded voice.
Selective Mutism involves a child’s inability to speak in select settings despite having normal speech elsewhere. SLPs help reduce anxiety and build communication confidence through structured therapy.
Semantics is the study of meaning in language – it examines how words, phrases, and sentences convey meaning. This field looks at the relationship between linguistic expressions and what they refer to in the real world or in our minds (for example, why “dog” means a certain kind of animal, or how the same word can have multiple related meanings).
SimplyThick is a xanthan gum-based liquid thickener designed for individuals with dysphagia. It offers safe, consistent thickening across IDDSI levels without clumping, altering taste, or requiring complex preparation.
The ability to use verbal and nonverbal language appropriately in social interactions, including skills in pragmatics, social understanding, and interaction with others.
Social Communication Disorder (SCD) is a developmental communication disorder involving persistent difficulties with the social use of language, including conversational skills, adapting language to context, and understanding nonliteral language. It is diagnosed when these pragmatic language deficits occur without meeting criteria for autism or another explanatory condition.
Social Stories are personalized short narratives designed to teach individuals appropriate social behaviors and understanding of social situations by describing them in a clear and positive way.
Social Thinking is a therapeutic framework that teaches people to better understand social contexts and others’ perspectives, thereby improving their social interactions and communication.
Specific Language Impairment is a developmental disorder marked by difficulties in language acquisition despite normal cognitive and sensory abilities.
A speech disorder is a disruption in the physical production of speech sounds, encompassing difficulties with articulation, fluency, voice, or motor planning. It includes conditions such as dysarthria, apraxia of speech, stuttering, and voice disorders, often resulting in reduced speech clarity or fluency.
A category of communication disorders involving difficulty with producing speech sounds correctly, including articulation errors, phonological process errors, and motor planning issues such as childhood apraxia of speech.
Spoken language disorders affect the ability to understand and/or use spoken language effectively, often impacting vocabulary, syntax, and discourse. SLPs assess these impairments across contexts and provide therapy focused on language form, content, and use.
Stopping is the process of replacing a long airflow sound (fricative or affricate like s, f, or ch) with a quick stop sound (t, p, or d). It’s a normal error in early speech, but children typically learn to produce the correct continuous sounds by about 3–5 years of age (depending on the sound), so continued stopping beyond that point is atypical.
Stuttering is a fluency disorder characterized by involuntary disruptions in the flow of speech, such as sound repetitions, prolongations, and blocks. These disruptions are often accompanied by physical tension, emotional distress, and avoidance behaviors, though language formulation and cognition remain intact.
Substitutions are speech errors where one sound is used in place of the correct sound. For example, saying “wabbit” for “rabbit” reflects a substitution of /w/ for /r/.
Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) is a disorder that disrupts the safe and efficient movement of food, liquids, or saliva through the oral, pharyngeal, or esophageal phases of swallowing. It can lead to risks such as aspiration, malnutrition, and dehydration and is commonly associated with neurological or structural impairments.
Syntax refers to the set of rules and principles that govern how words are arranged into phrases and sentences in a language. It determines the permissible word order and sentence structure, enabling us to distinguish grammatical sentences from jumbled word strings.
Transcortical Motor Aphasia presents with reduced speech initiation but preserved repetition and comprehension. SLPs focus therapy on stimulating spontaneous language through cueing and repetition-based tasks.
Transcortical Sensory Aphasia features fluent but empty speech, poor comprehension, and intact repetition. Therapy emphasizes improving understanding and functional language use.
An approach to therapy that recognizes the impact of trauma on communication and behavior, emphasizing safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment in therapeutic relationships.
An injury to the brain caused by an external force, resulting in potential impairments in cognition, language, speech, and other neurological functions, varying widely in severity and presentation.
Unaided communication is conveying messages using only one’s body (gestures, signs, facial expressions, etc.), without any external communication devices or aids.
Unintelligibility means that a person’s speech cannot be readily understood by listeners, often due to severe speech sound errors or motor speech impairments.
The upper aerodigestive tract is the combined throat and mouth region (including pharynx, larynx, oral/nasal cavities, and upper esophagus) through which both air and food pass, playing key roles in speech, swallowing, and breathing.
An utterance is a unit of speech – anything a person says at one time, ranging from a single word to a full sentence, typically bounded by silence or a turn change.
Velopharyngeal incompetence is a neuromotor disorder in which the soft palate and pharyngeal muscles cannot close properly during speech and swallowing due to muscle weakness or poor coordination. This results in hypernasal speech and nasal air escape, even when anatomy is structurally intact.
Velopharyngeal insufficiency is the inability of the soft palate to adequately close against the pharyngeal walls, leading to abnormal resonance and nasal escape during speech. It is commonly associated with structural deficits, such as cleft palate, and may cause hypernasality and reduced speech intelligibility.
Conditions affecting the pitch, loudness, or quality of the voice due to structural, neurological, or functional abnormalities, including both organic and psychogenic origins.
The Water Protocol is a dysphagia management strategy that allows patients at risk of aspiration to drink plain water under carefully controlled conditions (e.g., between meals with good oral hygiene) to maintain hydration and quality of life.
Wernicke’s area is a region in the left temporal lobe of the brain responsible for understanding language. Damage to Wernicke’s area results in Wernicke’s aphasia, where individuals can produce fluent speech with normal syntax and grammar, but the content is often nonsensical or jumbled, a phenomenon commonly referred to as "word salad."
Word retrieval is the process of selecting and saying the desired word from one’s memory; difficulties in word retrieval lead to pauses or errors in speech (“word-finding” problems).
A written language disorder is a learning disorder affecting reading and/or writing abilities (such as dyslexia or dysgraphia), resulting in difficulties decoding text, spelling, and composing or understanding written material.
Xerostomia is the condition of having a dry mouth due to reduced or absent saliva, which can lead to difficulties in swallowing, speaking, and maintaining oral health.
The Yale Swallowing Protocol is a bedside screening test for swallowing safety in which a patient’s ability to drink 3 ounces of water without coughing or choking is used to judge aspiration risk.
Yielding, in conversation, is the process of giving up one’s speaking turn intentionally, using verbal or nonverbal cues to let the other person take over.
The Zone of Proximal Development is the range of ability between what someone can do alone and what they can do with help – it’s the sweet spot for learning where supportive guidance leads to new independent skills.
