Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Speech Science Courses

Abstract

Purpose Speech conveys information about a speaker's identity—their age, gender, size, health, region of origin, language learning background, sexual orientation, and race—through a variety of acoustic cues. This review of the production and perception of extralinguistic information about speaker identity is intended to help instructors promote cultural and linguistic competence in basic anatomy and physiology, phonetics, and speech science courses through the understanding of indexical information in speech. Conclusions In assisting our students to recognize the anatomical/physiological and learned social and cultural speech features associated with the expression of personal identity, basic science instructors contribute to heightened awareness of listener expectations, stereotypes, and prejudices by future speech-language pathologists and audiologists so that they are better equipped to avoid misdiagnosis of speech differences and disorders, under referral or over referral of clients from vulnerable populations, and discriminatory practices leading to health disparities in clinical services and research.