Making Sounds Visible in Speech-Language Therapy for Aphasia

In this paper, I analyse video recordings of speech-language therapy sessions for people diagnosed with aphasia. I particularly explore the way in which the speech-language therapists instruct the patients to correctly pronounce speech sounds (e.g. phonemes, syllables) by deploying not only audible but also visible forms of cues. By using their bodies – face and gestures – as an instructional tool, the therapists make visual perceptual access to articulatory features of pronunciation relevant and salient. They can also make these sensory practices accountable through the use of other senses, such as touch. Data was collected in a hospital and in a rehabilitation clinic, tracking each patient’s recovery, and is part of a longitudinal multisite corpus. The paper considers the way in which participants in the therapeutic process use and coordinate forms of sensory access to language that are based on hearing and seeing. It highlights the importance of audio and video recordings to make accessible the auditory and visual details of these sensorial experiences – particularly, proper framings and the complementary use of fixed and mobile cameras.