Abstract

Multilingual Aspects of Speech Sound Disorders in Children explores both multilingual and multicultural aspects of children with speech sound disorders. The 30 chapters have been written by 44 authors from 16 different countries about 112 languages and dialects. The book is designed to translate research into clinical practice. It is divided into three sections: (1) Foundations, (2) Multilingual speech acquisition, (3) Speech-language pathology practice. An introductory chapter discusses cross-linguistic and multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children. Subsequent chapters address speech sound acquisition, how the disorder manifests in different languages, cultural contexts, and speakers, and addresses diagnosis, assessment and intervention. The research chapters synthesize available research across a wide range of languages. A unique feature of this book are the chapters that translate research into clinical practice. These chapters provide real-life vignettes for specific geographical or linguistic contexts.

The numerous chapters of the book present much more information than expected about the linguistic and practical problems in treating multilingual children with speech sound disorders and the possible outcomes of various linguistic interactions.The principal readers of this book would be practitioners in speech-language pathology, therapist, logopedists, etc. But this volume is not less important for students and researchers interested in linguistics, phonetics and/or phonology who will find here a host of interesting facts and topics for further study.

There is still much to be learned with regard to meeting the needs of our multilingual clients, but this text can make a substantial contribution to our practice based on the knowledge available today...this text is a must-read for all those clinicians working with multilingual children.

In this volume McLeod & Goldstein have assembled a group of international experts who take the reader on a fascinating worldwide tour of the speech of bilingualism and multilingualism. The focus is on understanding how speech sound disorder manifests within the variation and combinations of languages. The perspectives represented together form a comprehensive look at speech acquisition and impairment and should be of great interest to both researchers and clinicians who work with bilinguals.

This book clearly captures the state of our knowledge on child phonological disorders in multilingual children around the world and the challenges still to be faced with respect to theory building and practice.

Sharynne McLeod is professor of speech and language acquisition at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She is vice president of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association, editor of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and author of a number of books including the International Guide to Speech Acquisition.

Brian A. Goldstein is associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Temple University, USA. He currently serves on the editorial board of Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics and has previously served as Associate Editor and Editor of Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.