Making ‘Sense’: Emotions and Embodiment in Language Therapy

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Cederman, Kaye^{a; b}

Affiliations: [a] Senior Speech and Language Therapist, Charleville, Co. Cork, Ireland | [b] Research Associate, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Abstract: Until recently the Western model in child language therapy reflected the dominant medical and psycho-scientific regulation of human pathology. Since the turn of the twenty-first century however, poststructural ontology and epistemology increasingly echo the less valorised side of the mind/body divide that is, the body and emotions, affect and ‘feelings’. Where quantitative formalised assessment and intervention in language tended to smother awareness of ‘the body’ (including intentions, passions and emotions), there is now recognition that emotions are the basis of learning. The paper explores ‘Floortime’ (Greenspan & Weider, 1998) as language therapy with a girl classified as autistic, and argues that a critical health science perspective might generate language as an interactive imbroglio of emotions and sensations.

Keywords: child language, therapy, ‘Floortime’, emotions

DOI: 10.3233/ACS-2003-12-13103

Journal: Journal of Clinical Speech and Language Studies, vol. 12_13, no. 1, pp. 1-8, 2003