Hard Talk

When Speech Is Difficult

Jonathan Cole (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2025
MIT Press (Verlag)
9780262049566 (ISBN)

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A moving, patient-centred portrait of the social importance of speech, from a medical expert known for his humanizing explorations of health. Language comes to us through culture, environment, and family. Words embed over time, as we use our minds to comprehend them and then our mouths to say, mean, and own them. Without the ability to speak, or when talking becomes difficult, we face a challenge like few others, forced to reconnect with a world which assumes its communicators are eloquent vocally. In Hard Talk, Jonathan Cole takes a necessary look at the privilege of speech so we can better accommodate those for whom it presents problems. Cole creates space for people with a variety of conditions, including cerebral palsy, vocal cord palsy, cleft palate, Parkinson s, and post stroke dysphasia, to describe in their own words what the experience of difficult speech is like. No struggle is the same. Each develops along its own axis of factors cognitive, social, and physical that lead to unique vulnerabilities as well as extraordinary moments of adaptation and resilience. One person finds social chatter becoming more problematic than work speech. Another grows alarmed as changes in speech begin to constrain inner thoughts. Some lose the ability to find or make words though they retain awareness, while others lose self-awareness but maintain fluent speech bereft of meaning. One even loses the ability to speak with family while continuing to interact at work. Hard Talk reacquaints us with the social power of speech while affirming the humane value of listening. Cole also reflects on the neuroscientific advances we ve made in understanding barriers to speech and how we might reduce them.

Jonathan Cole is a consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology at University Hospitals, Dorset, and Professor at Bournemouth University. He has written six narrative books, most recently Chekhov s Sakhalin Journey: Doctor, Humanitarian, Writer.

Introduction
1 No Zzzs: Acquired Vocal Cord Palsy
2 Words Unsaid: Congenital Vocal Cord Palsy
3 I Found Myself Boring: Vocal Cord Palsy
4 We Eat Eels Everyday: Spasmodic Dysphonia
5 Conversing with Myself: Spasmodic Dysphonia
6 Stuff Happens: Cleft
7 Full On: Mὄbius
8 Just Like My Elbows: Parkinson’s
8 In My Head, I Talk Slowly: Cerebral Palsy
10 How We Live: Cerebral Palsy
11 Acquiesce with Silence: Cerebral Palsy
12 Walks on the Wild Side: Non-fluent Aphasia
13 Uncontrollable Dog: Non-fluent Aphasia
14 Absence and Presence: Non-fluent Aphasia
15 Eloquent Rhymes of Nothing: Fluent Aphasia
16 Nothing in Mind: Abulia
17 Conclusions: Residing in Voice
Postscript: Inner Voices in Aphasia.
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	02.05.2025
Zusatzinfo	2 BLACK AND WHITE ILLUS.
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Lebenshilfe / Lebensführung
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Psychoanalyse / Tiefenpsychologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
ISBN-13	9780262049566 / 9780262049566
Zustand	Neuware