Why is speech needed?
Scientists identify several main functions of speech that everyone should know about.
- Speech is a typical tool with which people exchange emotions and ideas. Language acts as a means of communication.
- Thanks to speech, the assimilation and transmission of collective experience accumulated by the population of the earth occurs. Through language, people recognize the world in which they live.
- To achieve the results of an activity, a person must organize and plan it. This process is only possible if he has linguistic abilities.
- With the help of speech, a person is able to influence the feelings and thoughts of other people.
The listed functions fully reveal the importance of language in the life of the world's population.
The concept of functional style
Functional style (language genre, functional variety of language) is the use of literary language in a certain field of human activity. Styles can be distinguished from each other by characteristic speech techniques, linguistic, morphological and syntactic features. Functional style is organized by several levels of linguistic means.
In the classical classification there are 5 functional speech styles:
Conversational style is a separate type that has no subspecies. The remaining 4 varieties are combined into a book-written style.
What kind of speech is there?
If we consider language in terms of the existence of its forms, we can distinguish oral and written. While writing or reading, written speech works. What oral form is used by humans? Listening and speaking are types of oral speech.
If we take into account the number of participants in the conversation, then the speech can be dialogical or monological. Translation from Greek makes it possible to understand that dialogue is a conversation between two or several persons, and monologue is the expression of one person.
Based on the beliefs of defectologists, speech can be correct or incorrect. Linguists give a similar assessment of language. In their opinion, correct speech is literate speech, but it can have both positive and negative connotations. Incorrect (illiterate) contains a huge number of language errors.
Journalistic style
The journalistic style of speech is known from the language of the media. It is used to describe and present information in magazines, newspapers, television and radio, as well as during public speaking. The main purpose of journalism is to convey information in understandable language to the general public.
Features of journalistic style:
- Heterogeneity of stylistic means.
- A combination of special terminology and emotionally charged statements.
- Use, if necessary, terms from all fields of knowledge (science, technology, medicine) together with colloquial speech.
- Use to cover any topic.
- The use of special grammatical forms: the use of the singular in the meaning of the plural (“How did a man master fire?”), the use of the plural of words that are not used in this form (power, search, freedom), present tense verbs.
- Use of derivative prepositions (taking into account, in light of, for reason).
- Let's allow the word order to be reversed to bring the topic first (“Politics: what don’t we still know about power?”).
- An abundance of rhetorical questions.
The journalistic style includes three genres: analytical (article, review, review), informational (report, interview, report), artistic and journalistic (essay, essay).
Is it important to be able to speak well?
The debate about what kind of human speech should be appears quite often in the scientific pedagogical environment. This discrepancy worries both the younger and older generations. Most people are still inclined to believe that the language should be literate, in other words, beautiful.
The ability to speak correctly is not born with a person. This skill needs to be learned. The process of language acquisition begins in preschool childhood and continues throughout life. To achieve a result, desire alone is not enough. It will take some effort and a lot of time.
A person who has mastered the art of speaking always makes a good impression; he stands out from those around him. The figures of speech used indicate the level of his culture. It is believed that a person who can control the flow of words, phrases, and sounds is able to control his mind.
So, mastery of the correct beautiful language with its positive coloring is a tremendous dignity of a person.
Functional and semantic types of speech
Functionally, semantic types of speech are methods, schemes and verbal structures that are used depending on the purpose of speech and its meaning. Traditionally, it is customary to distinguish 3 types of speech:
Description text is used when listing the properties, characteristics, characteristics of an object or phenomenon. At the beginning of the text, as a rule, the author points to the subject, and then describes it in detail, using epithets, comparative phrases, and contrasts. A characteristic feature of this type of speech is the ability, if desired, to significantly shorten the text without losing its semantic meaning.
A narrative text has the main function of telling about an event, listing in detail the course of its development. The text is characterized by verbs and obvious dynamism, as well as the presence of a beginning, climax and denouement.
The purpose of a discourse text is to tell about certain events and phenomena by establishing a relationship or cause-and-effect relationship between them. The text always has a thesis, reflections and conclusions, as well as a conclusion.
What are speech defects?
Problems in the functioning of the articulatory apparatus are indicators of incorrect speech. Tongue-tiedness causes a lot of problems that can affect both personal life and career advancement, and the affairs of those around the person.
A child who experiences difficulties in the functioning of the speech organs will certainly have difficulties with learning at school. They may be related to general academic performance, the formation of handwriting, spelling literacy, and mastery of reading techniques.
What kind of speech can a person have if the relevant organs are not working correctly?
- Fuzzy pronunciation or distorted pronunciation of individual sounds - the child burrs, lisps.
- Failure to pronounce endings in words.
- Violation of the order of sounds in a word - their interchange.
- Poor vocabulary.
- Inability to construct coherent expressions.
- Violation of the rate of pronunciation of words (slow or fast), stuttering.
Prerequisites for violations
Having figured out what kind of speech happens when the articulatory apparatus is not working correctly, it is worth paying attention to the preconditions that could influence the problems that arose. And the sources of violations are very different.
One of the circumstances that causes a malfunction of the speech organs is various types of injuries that would have been received by the child during childbirth or in the first years of life. This reason can be classified as more languid. The one that relates to hereditary disposition is also more serious.
In addition, speech disorders can appear due to insufficient development of phonemic hearing, which leads to the child’s inability to fully understand spoken phrases. A child’s stay in a certain speech environment also has a significant impact on the level of language development.
His ancestors and close circle can have a huge impact on the development of a child’s ability to speak, listen, read or write. For example, replacing live communication with watching TV will definitely lead to a delay. If adults do not pay attention to visible deficiencies, believing that the problem will resolve itself, this can cause a significant lag in speech development.
Where speech impediments are relieved
Before correcting the shortcomings, the specialist to whom the patient contacted must establish the preconditions for the difficulties that have arisen. The methods and techniques that will be used in the work depend on them.
If the development of speech is influenced by neurological differences or they are associated with an incorrect structure of the articulatory organs, then, in addition to a speech therapist, a surgeon or neurologist will be needed. A comprehensive approach to working with people who have differences in speech development is more effective.
Speech therapy classes with a child can be conducted by specialists in schools and kindergartens. Similar offices are opened at children's hospitals or in child development centers. A speech therapist conducts classes using numerous methods, techniques and techniques. The exercises are focused on developing the articulatory apparatus, motor skills, and the baby’s ability to observe, associate, consider, and express his emotions.
The parents provide enormous assistance in overcoming the child’s speech problems by working with him at home. Doctors and teachers, having explained to adults what a child’s speech can be like with constant exercise, give certain tasks. All advice must be carried out in an indispensable manner. Only with this approach can you get a lasting good result.
Speech styles and their features
Speech style is a stable community of certain speech techniques and linguistic elements that will be appropriate when presenting one or another form of information. A person can communicate informally with a friend, maintain a business conversation with colleagues or superiors, or tell a story to a child.
The style of speech is selected based on the conditions and objectives of communication and depends on where, with whom and what the conversation is about.
In total, there are 5 styles of speech: 4 bookish and 1 colloquial. Each of them has its own characteristics - speech techniques. Words, phrases, types of sentences, the possibility of using neutral expressions, emotional statements, epithets, and so on differ.
Styles appear in both speaking and writing.
Where they teach correct beautiful speech
If a person has a desire to improve the style of the language, its expressiveness, and expand their vocabulary, then special speech courses are perfect for this.
Many people believe that such classes are necessary only for mastering foreign languages, but this is not so. Their native speech is also studied. What can she become after training? This is demonstrated with pleasure by people who have completed the course.
To develop excellent literate speech, schoolchildren are given special elective classes provided for in the curriculum.
Formal business style
Official business communication is associated with business and business communications. This style of speech is appropriate in economics, international relations, law, official institutions, politics and other areas where maintaining an official nature of communication is required.
A classic example of the use of an official business style is the drafting of official documents: international treaties, statements, explanatory notes, business papers, lawsuits and others.
Signs of formal business style:
- Stability and isolation.
- The use of speech standards characteristic of a particular situation and patterns.
- Conciseness and standard presentation.
- Predominance of narrative sentences.
- Use of clericalisms, abbreviations, complex sentences.
- Direct word order.
- Absence or minimal amount of evaluative and emotional statements.
The official business style is divided into documentary-official and everyday business. The first is used in the preparation of legislative documents and various acts in international practice. Everyday business is typical for communication within an enterprise or between different institutions, official communications.
Communication in a formal business style is part of business etiquette.
Examples of speech exercises
- Remember the title of a movie you recently watched or a book you read. State the content in 4 sentences that can be written down or retained in memory. Think about which of these proposals is not so fundamental, exclude it. Do the same with the rest of the offers, leaving only one. Say it a couple of times, edit if you think it doesn't sound right. This exercise, done often, will teach you to express your thoughts concisely.
- Many people adore tongue twisters - they are funny and useful. But not many people understand what slow talkers are. The exercise helps to get rid of confused, incomprehensible speech. The task is to pronounce the phrase slowly, clearly, with pauses. But unjustified stops and prolongation of sounds should be excluded. Try to enjoy the sound of the speech. You can select phrases for the exercise yourself or use the recommended ones.
Short advice
- Always remember what speech is like.
- Know that you can determine a person’s character by the way they speak.
- Incomprehensible speech indicates a lack of culture or knowledge.
- Instead of filler words, use short pauses.
- Listen to what people say.
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How does speech synthesis work?
Science, business and medicine are interested in robots and machines that not only speak text fragments, but also synthesize their own pieces of text. Even e-books cope with this, although not very well. We are talking about full-fledged communication, when a person asks something from a machine, it understands and gives an adequate answer. And here everything is even more complicated than in the case of speech recognition.
In this case, neural networks come into play. To create a full-fledged speech synthesis system, a large team of specialists from different fields is usually required, not only IT experts, but also linguists, specialists in phonetics, acoustics, prosody and other specialties. Thus, a program that synthesizes speech must be able to correctly place stress, distinguish between homograph words like “lock” and “castle,” correctly place and maintain pauses, correctly form intonation, and even understand emotions. All this is very difficult, especially considering that different languages require differently trained systems.
