A Descriptive Study of Semantic-Pragmatic Language Disorder in Two Adults

This paper studies the concept of semantic and pragmatic disorders in adults, using two adults as case study. We shall work within the theoretical framework of semantics, pragmatics and theories on semantic and pragmatic disorders. Our main finding is that this impairment does exist in adults who may exhibit very little obvious disability in their expressive language behaviour but manifest poor conversational and dialogical skills. They have a high tendency of misinterpreting utterances and are very easily misunderstood themselves.


Pragmatics
propounded a very useful definition of pragmatics as a study of the use of language in human communication as determined by the conditions of society. In this paper, we have tried to define semantics as the study of meaning, expressed through language, by implication, literal meaning. In communication there is a need to sometimes determine whether an utterance is meant as a statement, guess, request or promise. It is this aspect of communication which focuses on the interactional part of communication that scholars term "the pragmatic aspect (Bartsch 1979:12). In other words, pragmatics may be also defined as the theory that deals with the conditions for the correct use of expressions and constructions in a given language. It deals with connotative rather than literal or conceptual meaning.
Grice argues that it is impossible to account for some aspects of conversational behaviour, unless we assume that people are cooperative. In his Cooperative principle, he proposes the following maxims necessary for communication: 1) Maxim of Quantity: Give the right amount of information a) Make your contribution as informative as required for the current purposes of the exchange. b) Do not make it more informative than required.

2)
Maxim of Quality: Make your contribution one that is true; a) Do not say what you believe to be false b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence 3) Relation: Be relevant 4) Manner: Avoid obscurity, ambiguity, be brief, be orderly.

Semantic-Pragmatic Langauge Disorders
A Semantic-Pragmatic language disorder is a term introduced into language studies by Rapin and Allen in 1983. It is used to refer to the impairment found in children and adults who show very mild autistic features but manifestation of semantic pragmatic language and communication deficiencies. There are two types of Semantic pragmatic disorders: 1.
Expressive Semantic-pragmatic disorder Receptive Semantic-pragmatic disorder is a situation where word comprehension is difficult for subject while expressive Semantic pragmatic disorder describes a situation where subject speaks out of context. Both are commonly characterized by poor conversational skills and inappropriacy in use of language.

Historical Background
As earlier stated, Rapin and Allen (1983) were the first to suggest the term and use it to describe the children with different communicative problems. They were observed in different behavioural traits such as:  Pathological talkativeness.  Insufficient access to vocabulary and discourse comprehension.  Characteristic choice of terms (stereotyped).  Inappropriate conversational skills.

Semantic Disorders
Semantics is that area of language study that is concerned with understanding the meaning of words, phrases and sentences and using those words appropriately in speech. People with semantic difficulties especially children are unable to understand the meaning of lexical items, words, phrases and sentences. There is evident difficulty with abstract or vague words, especially those that have to do with feelings and emotions. Again, they also experience difficulty with idioms, metaphorical and figurative expressions since they take them literally. The old man kicked the bucket "would mean just that to them. An example was given of a fourteen year old who was asked if he enjoyed spending time with his friends. He didn't understand how one can "spend time". All he knows is to spend "money" (Bowen 2001). Semantic disabilities also reflect in their inability to identify key points in a sentence or discussion.
Consequently, they may change the topic suddenly thinking they are still on the same topic. Another example of an eleven (11) year old girl is useful at this point, she was asked: D: Could you get the book off the shelf and give it to me? Reply: The Gulf Stream warms coast line.
Apparently, she made an obscure connection between "shelf" and "gulf" stream", which may have been as a result of her deep interest in marine biology and ocean currents (Bowen 2001).

Pragmatic Disorders
Pragmatics is the area of language study concerned with the use of language in social contexts. In other words, 19 knowing what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and how "to be" with other people in conversation. H.P Grice in his cooperative principle believes that, human beings communicating are in a sort of co-operative activity. A speaker always takes his turn and gives his interlocutor an opportunity to take his own turn.
However, people with pragmatic difficulties have problem using language in socially acceptable ways. They do not recognize turn-taking in speech and so may "talk over the top of one's head". Sometimes, they respond to speeches that require answers with an inappropriate silence (not a deliberate silence). Other features of pragmatic disorder are;  Excessive interruptions  Irrelevant talks  Uninteresting conversation Their communicative behaviour seems rude and inconsiderate. In the next section, we shall be considering what is considered pragmatic skills in communication.

Pragmatic Skills 1)
Knowledge that one has to give an answer when a question is asked.

2)
Ability to participate in conversation by taking turns with other speakers.

3)
Ability to notice and respond to non-verbal language behaviour, reaction in appropriate ways to the other person's body language and mood. People with Semantic-Pragmatic disorder tend to change their mind with a little pressure; an impulsive act.

4)
Awareness that one has to introduce a topic in such a way that your listener understands fully.

5)
Knowing word and sentence type to employ when initiating a conversation and to also respond appropriately to speech directed at you.

6)
Ability to maintain a topic (if you must change, do so appropriately and politely).

7)
Ability to maintain appropriate eye contact during a conversation (that is not staring and not looking away).

8)
Ability to distinguish how to talk and behave towards different communicative partners, responding to both formal and informal speech situations.

Causes and Characteristics
The major cause of this impairment is yet uncertain. But research findings have shown that it must have some generic origin and the basic characteristics are as follows: 1.
Delayed language development.

3.
Difficulty with pronouns or pronoun reversal.

4.
Difficulty in understanding questions.  Understanding choices or making decisions.  Difficulty in following stories or conversations (and their own conversations are off topic or one-sided).  Difficulty with extracting key points, they get lost in the details  Difficulty with tense of verbs.  Difficulty with explanations or description of events.  Tendency to be concrete and to prefer facts to stories.  Difficulty with understanding or taking satire or jokes.  Difficulty with understanding contextual clues.  Difficulty in reading comprehension.  Difficulty in body language reading.  Difficulty in making and maintaining friendship and relationships because of delayed language development.  Difficulty with distinguishing offensive remarks.  Difficulty with organizational skills. They may display marvelous abilities in Maths, Computer, Geography, Astronomy, Reading, History, Sports, Politics and Music. According to Bishop and Norbury (2002), children with SPD may be fluent in language production and have clearly articulated expressive language but they exhibit problem in the area of pragmatics or language use.

Early Signs between Ages 0-4 1
Quiet baby. They are content most of the time 2 Like to play alone repetitively 3 Difficult toddler with no sense of danger Does not respond to noise appears deaf 5 Late talker does not babble 6 Speaks out of context memorizing phrases of favourite television shows 7 Inconsistent eye contact 8 Late pointer, unable to express wants 9 Fussy eater: refuse to eat certain meals 10 A loner, prefers to play alone than with peers of the same age 11 Late in recognizing self in pictures or mirror 12 Unable to initiate play with other children but will interact in rough tumble play 13 Difficulty in sharing, persistent tantrums 14 Good with jigsaw puzzles, numbers, letters, shapes and colours 15 Prefer helping in real activities like washing up or operating a computer 16 Repeats like a parrot 17 Obsessional interest 18 Very independent, does not ask for help 19 Inappropriate response to sensory stimuli like touch, pain and sound 20 Difficulty in following rules.

Distinction between Autism, Semantic Pragmatic Disorder and Asperger's Syndrome
In an article discussing the boundaries between autism, Asperger's syndrome and SPD, Bishop (1989) quoted Rapin's findings in support of the view that Autism and developmental language disorder were not mutually exclusive and that the best approach was that of a continuum. Bishop's proposed continuum model had two dimensions: firstly, that of meaningful verbal communication and secondly that of interests and social relationships. In avoiding a single continuum of severity, Bishop was able to contrast the pattern of symptoms between the disorders. Thus, children with relatively normal communication but abnormal social relationships would have Asperger's syndrome, children with relatively normal social relationships but abnormal verbal communication would have SPD and those with abnormal abilities for each criteria would be children with autism. Furthermore, Brook and Bowler (1992) express the opinion that both autism and SPD resulted from the same fundamental cognitive and interpersonal difficulties and should be included in the autistic continuum. For them, "SPD" and "autism" are different perceptions of the same phenomenon. They concluded that more research was required to explain the social -cognitive abilities of children with SPD (Shields, 1996;Gagnon, 1997:45;Wing, 1996:73).

Analysis and Discussion
In this section, we shall be considering some conversations from our data in order to highlight traces of semantic-pragmatic disorders and other instances of conversational inappropriacy. Our analysis shall be under the following sub-categories.
Receptive Semantic disorder -Inability to understand literal word meaning. 3.
Pragmatic disorders : a. Violation of exchange structure.
Unusually or socially inappropriate content and style as exemplified in topic drift, unmarked topic shift and inappropriate questioning (Bishop and Adams 1989: 244). Bishop and Adams (1989: 245) recorded the following inappropriate speech as an example of expressive errors.

CONVERSATION I A:
Why did you have to go to the Doctor? C: I used to have a headache.
(Error in tense) In our study however, a related inappropriate response was observed when our female subject was hospitalized. Where have you been? F: I was in the hospital.

S:
Why were you admitted in the hospital? F: I ran away for some days. (The inappropriacy is found in "ran" anybody "admitted" in the hospital does not "run" away). The respondent may have decided to feign sickness because she was tired of the work load at home and decided to pretend to be sick in order to be admitted in the hospital. Errors in tense, wrong verbs, prepositions, etc. may not be rampant in adult speech as we find with children. Except may be with the uneducated and low class and then it may not be an SPD.

Receptive Semantic Disorder
Inability to understand literal meaning -evidence from our research shows that our subjects did not exhibit much of this disorder. With children, they give an inappropriate response to a question asked by an adult. But with adults, it is not that simplistic: e.g. For children:

A:
Where did you go on holiday? C: In September.

A:
What other kind of party could it be? C: Cakes and drinks. For the adults, it is a bit more complicated. For example we observed the following inappropriate response from the male respondent: A: Isn't your cousin's house by the corner? B: So that you can go and gossip? Because gossiping is so sweet? The child may not have understood the meaning of the lexical items used and so brings an inappropriate response or the child just felt like keeping the conversation going and so gives an answer whether it was suitable or not. For the adult however, the male respondent believes that the question about the cousin's house meant that A wanted to go to visit the cousin and indulge in some gossip with the cousin.

Pragmatic Disorder (a)
Violation of exchange structure; this describes situations when subjects do not obey conversational rules or produce utterances appropriately for coherent communication. Some evidences are presented below: (i)

NIL RESPONSE: (Silence)
This happens in a conversation when one party does not respond, not even an "I don't know". Our subjects in this study tended to exhibit this trait to a large extent. Our female subject, (henceforth "F"), usually does this when distracted. It takes her time to come back and if prodded responds with a:

F:
Hm…? (as if distracted and lost in thought). For the male subject, henceforth "M", he does this when he does not fully comprehend what has been said and needs time to think. For him, it is an avoidance strategy. (ii) Failure to adopt context in comprehension. This is when subject understands the literal meaning of an utterance but overlooks the context and illocutionary force of the utterance. CONVERSATION 3: S: F, can you tell me how the meeting went? F: Yes I can (But does not proceed to fulfill the promise) Or S: F, please tell your husband that I'd like to see him? F: Ok (but she does not move an inch).

Inappropriate Presupposition
Presupposition refers to what the speaker has in mind before making an utterance. In our study, M suspects S and another friend are having affair. He sees the friend as he was going out around S's house and wrongly presupposes that the friend had visited S: M: How was your day? S: Fine, thank you.

M:
He was well entertained, wasn't he?

S:
Who was? M: Stop pretending S: Who? What are you talking about? M: I saw him. You're pretending. Conversation 3 seems to confirm our suspicion that adults with SPD tend to be unsure of themselves and are highly suspicious. As can be seen below, other utterances fit into this category.

SCENE:
In a classroom. S and M had just returned from an event they attended.

S:
Please excuse me.

M:
Silence (S returns a few minutes later and enquires) S: Are you ready for dinner? M: Where did you go? S: To pray.

M:
Why did you not pray with me? S: (Surprised and remain silent) M: Is it because you think I'm not spiritual enough to pray with you? S: Speechless at this insinuation and conclusion but said nothing more. CONVERSATION 6 S visits F and a gift is presented, a beautiful earring. As the guest, S, lay down to sleep, she pulled off the earrings and placed them on top of the refrigerator. She forgot it as she was leaving. The next day, the following conversation ensued:

S:
Hey, I forgot my earrings in your house. F: (Grunts) hm, hm, hm?

S:
Did you see them? F: (Obviously upset). You were looking for a way to end the friendship and you did not know how to tell me to my face so you purposely left the earrings as a sign of rejection.

S:
Ah! Ah! F: I know people have been telling you things and you've been listening to them. (S is shocked. F is not convinced and is no longer interested in the discussion). (iv) TOO MUCH INFORMATION According to Grice in his maxim of quantity, do not make your contribution more informative than required. Research has shown that people with SPD tend to flout this maxim. Children with SPD are known to be talkative and repetitive. For instance, F lost a pregnancy and on S's enquiry about it, she goes on to confirm and tell how the pregnancy had been a mistake, an accident and lets S into other secrets that cannot be put down on paper.
UNNECESSARY ASSERTION / DENIALS From our study, we observed that this was a trait found in our subjects especially F, who would with a high pitched voice make assertions that were unnecessary, when she was denying something. She would almost do it with a shriek No!. its not me, I didn't do it. This was also done repeatedly. (vi)

EXCESSIVE ELABORATION
This was also a feature characteristic of our subjects. In making explanations, M seems to take a lot of time to give a detailed explanation with so many analogies and examples that one could get bored. Sometimes, before he would get to the real point he wanted to make, one would have lost track of what it was all about. Many times, S has found herself complaining; please get to the point now!! (viii) A related feature is that of unnecessary reiteration, using other words to make the same point. This is also a feature characteristic of M who has an analytical mind. As research has confirmed, children with SPD outgrow some of the autistic traits after some time, that is, they begin to talk more fluently and may stick to the topic of conversation to some extent. Nevertheless, in adult life, some traces still seep through as our study seeks to establish. Let us still consider the following conversations to highlight more characteristics: 5. HIGH SUSPICION: Every movement around people with SPD which they cannot understand is met with great suspicion that something is going on behind them (something negative usually). CONVERSATION 7: Two friends go into the hotel to see a friend. S had to see a client alone and as she comes out Children with SPD may memorize phrases from television shows they love and it is that simple. With the adults, in addition to that, they may have to rehearse every intended speech they have to make (Maybe a meeting with a new client ) alone in the room, before a mirror, etc. They are usually too embarrassed to do it before someone else, even a spouse. This confirms to a great extent earlier research that stipulated that SPD children have stereotyped speech patterns, using only familiar terms and memorized phrases. So, as adults they have to familiarize themselves with new terms so they can use them without difficulty.

Feelings of Insecurity and Mood Swings
Every conversation and laughter that happens around them is about them. Feelings of insecurity follow them from their childhood maybe because of the mockery they had received from peers, teachers and family members due to their poor conversational skills.