Re: Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists founded (6-1-1945)

On 1/8/2024 11:49 AM, Antonio Marques wrote:

Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net> wrote:

>
  Ar an séiú lá de mí Eanair, scríobh Ross Clark:
>
  > [The "Royal" and the "and Language" were only added in the 1990s]
  >
  > Crystal sees this event as a merger of two strands:
  > "artistic" -- elocutionists, training actors and public speakers in voice
  > production, and "correcting accents thought to be inferior";
  > "medical" -- dealing with such things as aphasia caused by stroke, and delayed
  > speech development in children.
  > The RCST established a common standard of professional training and
  > qualifications, for the UK at least.
  >
  > PTD used to opine that all "speech therapists" were frauds and charlatans,
  > apparently because he equated them with the "artistic" type, and didn't
  > believe anybody could or should be taught to speak with a different accent.
  > I, on the other hand, had only run into a few of the "medical" type, who
  > were doing linguistics courses. They seemed like quite sincere and
  > well-meaning people.

In my medical work they are sensible, reliable people serving a huge under-met
need. The amount of aphasia, dysphasia and dysphagia from stroke is immense and
while we are getting better at preventing stroke it is unlikely that there will
be any significant decrease in need for them.
>
The “artistic” type; that’s a very odd opinion from PTD. Of course actors will
be interested in speaking in different accents, why wouldn’t they be? I seem to
remember him having difficulty believing me when I mentioned John Mahoney
(Martin Crane in “Frasier”) emigrated to the US at 18 and learned American
English as an adult.
>

 Over the years PTD has mentioned how actors and singers are professionally
trained to sound according to what they need or want to. I’m not sure who
does that, I know nothing about the backstage.
 What I’m wondering about is whether the medical kind, as you call them, are
really effective in their work. But even being less than effective doesn’t
mean they’re cranks.
 Maybe it was about some kind of ‘speech conversion therapy’ proposing to
educate people away from their dialect? But I don’t know if such a thing
even exists anywhere.
 

PTD...  is missed.
my biggest memories of PTD are:
1.  bad -- his ignorance of Chinese writing
2.  good..............