LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 17:11 November 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
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Fluency in Discourse for Female RHD Participants

Agniva Pal, Ph.D. Scholar
Dr. Gautam Ganguly
Prof. Vaishna Narang

Abstract

This paper conducts a cross sectional study on 4 Bangla speaking RHD (right hemisphere of the brain damaged) participants at the level of discourse, along with 4 age and gender matched controls. We are looking at the fluency in discourse, for these participants. Fluency or words spoken per minute is the number of words spoken in a minute. While making a discourse, every person has an average rate at which they speak and this is fluency in discourse. The average rate at which a person speaks in a discourse has been manually calculated from the mentioned 4 RHD and 4 control participants and then tabulated and compared. Participants with damage to the right hemisphere of the brain have been seen to have stammering speech and a slower rate of fluency in comparison with normal people. This paper puts that hypothesis to the test and compares 4 RHD participants with 4 age- and gender-matched normal controls.

The study procedure consisted of narrating two short stories to the participants and then requesting them to narrate back the story, which was recorded by the researcher. The recordings were analyzed in Praat, where the number of words spoken in a minute or fluency in discourse was calculated. Fluency was tabulated using Ms. Excel. The 4 participants have been compared to single controls and to the mean of the whole group.

This paper has found out that there is a marked difference between the fluency ranges of the RHD participants at 123 words per minute in comparison with the controls at 132 words per minute, proving that RHD participants have a lesser rate of words per minute spoken in discourse.

1. Introduction

The right hemisphere of the brain primarily controls the voluntary activities in the left side of the body. Apart from that it imparts personalities to human beings, making us unique and novel and different from each other. The right hemisphere of the brain is also responsible for helping us comprehend the theme of situations, in particular, of discourses. It helps in understanding what is being spoken about, so that we can speak relevant things. The right hemisphere further helps with understanding metaphors and imageries. The right hemisphere is responsible for giving us the sense of perception and when it is damaged the subjects affected can lose the sense of perception. Left side of the body neglect is very common among subjects with right hemisphere damage. The right hemisphere helps recognise tones in voices as well as other para-linguistic cues in voice which help us understand conversations better. The right hemisphere also gives us the ability to use the frequency modulations, we do, in normal conversations to express various para-linguistic messages along with normal speech (Springer, Deutsch, 1993, Weisenberg, 1935, Rachel and Crow, 2005, Metcalfe, Funnell and Gazzaniga, 1995, Moor, 1982, Robinson, Kubos, Starr, Rao, Price, 1984, Vallar, Perani, 1986, Bihrlea, Brownell, Powelsona and Gardnerc, 1986, Ozonoff, Miller, 1996, Gordon, Hewer, Wade, 1987, Narang, 2009).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Agniva Pal, M.A. in Linguistics, M.Phil. Linguistics
Ph.D. Scholar
Centre for Linguistics
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067
India
agniva.jnu@gmail.com

Dr. Gautam Ganguly
Doctor and Professor at IPGME & R and SSKM Hospital
244 A.J.C. Bose Road
Kolkata - 700 020
West Bengal
India

Prof. Vaishna Narang, M.A., Ph.D. Linguistics
Professor at Centre for Linguistics
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067
India

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