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A lisp is a
speech impairment Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech skills are ...
in which a person misarticulates
sibilant Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
s (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech.


Types

* A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping is produced when the tip of the tongue protrudes between the front teeth and dentalized lisping is produced when the tip of the tongue just touches the front teeth. The transcription in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
for interdental sibilants is and and for simple dental sibilants is and . When a fronted lisp does not have a sibilant quality, due to placing the lack of a grooved articulation, the IPA transcription would be or variants thereof. * A occurs when the and sounds are produced with air-flow over the sides of the tongue. It is also called "slushy ess" or a "slushy lisp" in part due to its wet, spitty sound. The symbols for these lateralised sounds in the
extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internatio ...
for disordered speech are and . * A occurs when part or the entire air stream is directed through the nasal cavity. The transcription for sibilants with nasal frication in the extensions to the IPA is and ; simple
nasal fricative In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internationa ...
s are and . * A strident lisp results in a high-frequency whistle or hissing sound caused by stream passing between the tongue and the hard surface. In the extensions to the IPA, whistled sibilants are transcribed and . * A palatal lisp is where the speaker attempts to make a sibilant while the middle of the tongue is in contact with the soft palate, or with a posterior articulation of the sibilant. The latter may be transcribed and , and , or the like.


Causes

Successful treatments have shown that causes are functional rather than physical: that is, most lisps are caused by errors in tongue placement or fatness of tongue within the mouth rather than caused by any injury or congenital deformity to the mouth. The most frequently discussed of these problems is
tongue thrust Tongue thrust (also called reverse swallow or immature swallow) is a pseudo-pathological name of what is either considered a normal adaptive lip seal mechanism, whereby normal nasal breathing or normal swallowing can occur. Or, it is seen as an o ...
in which the tongue protrudes beyond the front teeth. This protrusion affects speech as well as swallowing and can lead to lisping.
Ankyloglossia Ankyloglossia, also known as tongue-tie, is a congenital oral anomaly that may decrease the mobility of the tongue tip and is caused by an unusually short, thick lingual frenulum, a membrane connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of ...
or tongue tie can also be responsible for lisps in children — however, it is unclear whether these deficiencies are caused by the tongue tie itself or the muscle weakness following the correction of the tongue tie.
Overbite Overbite is the extent of vertical ( superior-inferior) overlap of the maxillary central incisors over the mandibular central incisors, measured relative to the incisal ridges. The term overbite does not refer to a specific condition, nor i ...
s and
underbite In orthodontics, a malocclusion is a misalignment or incorrect relation between the teeth of the upper and lower dental arches when they approach each other as the jaws close. The English-language term dates from 1864; Edward Angle (1855-1930), ...
s may also contribute to non lingual lisping. Temporary lisps can be caused by dental work, dental appliances such as dentures or retainers or by swollen or bruised tongues.


Treatment


Frenectomy

Lisps caused by tongue tie can be treated by a dentist or otolaryngologist (ENT) with a
lingual frenectomy A lingual frenectomy (also known as a tongue-tie release) is the removal of a band of tissue (the lingual frenulum) connecting the underside of the tongue with the floor of the mouth. A lingual frenectomy is performed to correct ankyloglossia (ton ...
, or laser incision, which takes less than 10 to 15 minutes to complete.


Speech therapy

With an interdental lisp, the therapist teaches the student how to keep the tongue behind the two front incisors. One popular method of correcting articulation or lisp disorders is to isolate sounds and work on correcting the sound in isolation. The basic sound, or
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
, is selected as a target for treatment. Typically the position of the sound within a word is considered and targeted. The sound appears in the beginning of the word, middle, or end of the word (initial, medial, or final). Take for example, correction of an "S" sound (lisp). Most likely, a speech language pathologist (SLP) would employ exercises to work on Starting practice words would most likely consist of "S-initial" words such as "say, sun, soap, sip, sick, said, sail." According to this protocol, the SLP slowly increases the complexity of tasks (context of pronunciations) as the production of the sound improves. Examples of increased complexity could include saying words in phrases and sentences, saying longer multi syllabic words, or increasing the tempo of pronunciation. Using this method, the SLP achieves success with their student by targeting a sound in a phonetically consistent manner. Phonetic consistency means that a target sound is isolated at the smallest possible level (phoneme, phone, or
allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
) and that the context of production must be consistent. Consistency is critical, because factors such as the position within the word, grouping with other sounds (vowels or consonants), and the complexity all may affect production. Another popular method for treating a lisp is using specially designed devices that go in the mouth to provide a tactile cue of exactly where the tongue should be positioned when saying the "S" sound. This tactile feedback has been shown to correct lisp errors twice as fast as traditional therapy. Using either or both methods, the repetition of consistent contexts allows the student to align all the necessary processes required to properly produce language; language skills (ability to formulate correct sounds in the brain: What sounds do I need to make?),
motor planning In psychology and neuroscience, motor planning is a set of processes related to the preparation of a movement that occurs during the reaction time (the time between the presentation of a stimulus to a person and that person's initiation of a motor r ...
(voicing and jaw and tongue movements: How do I produce the sound?), and auditory processing (receptive feedback: Was the sound produced correctly? Do I need to correct?). A student with an articulation or lisp disorder has a deficiency in one or more of these areas. To correct the deficiency, adjustments have to be made in one or more of these processes. The process to correct it is more often than not, trial and error. With so many factors, however, isolating the variables (the sound) is imperative to getting to the result faster. A phonetically consistent treatment strategy means practicing the same thing over and over. What is practiced is consistent and does not change. The words might change, but the phoneme and its positioning is the same (say, sip, sill, soap, ...). Thus, successful correction of the disorder is found in manipulating or changing the other factors involved with speech production (tongue positioning, cerebral processing, etc.). Once a successful result (speech) is achieved, then consistent practice becomes essential to reinforcing correct productions. When the difficult sound is mastered, the student will then learn to say the sound in syllables, then words, then phrases and then sentences. When a student can speak a whole sentence without lisping, attention is then focused on making correct sounds throughout natural conversation. Towards the end of the course of therapy, the student will be taught how to monitor his or her own speech, and how to correct as necessary. Speech therapy can sometimes fix the problem, but in some cases speech therapy fails to work.


See also

*
Gay male speech Particularly within North American English, gay male speech has been the focus of numerous modern stereotypes, as well as sociolinguistic studies. Scientific research has uncovered phonetically significant features produced by many gay men and demo ...
*
Speech sound disorder A speech sound disorder (SSD) is a speech disorder in which some sounds (phonemes) are not produced or used correctly. The term "protracted phonological development" is sometimes preferred when describing children's speech, to emphasize the contin ...


References


External links


Beth Morrisey MLIS (25 September 2012) "Lisps", SpeechDisorder.co.uk

Caroline Bowen (23 November 2011) "Lisping - When /s/ and /z/ are hard to say", speech-language-therapy dot com
{{Authority control Speech disorders Specific developmental disorders fr:Sigmatisme