ABSTRACT
In 1953 Macdonald Critchley delivered the Semon lecture and chose as his subject “Articulatory Defects in Aphasia”. He said “throughout the literature upon speech disorders there is a regret-table tendency to confuse the terms ‘language’ and ‘speech’”. Dyslalia only means “to speak wrongly” and is, therefore, as vague a description as stomach-ache. It has a limited use for the purpose of indicating what is really wrong with the patient. Speech therapists, just as the doctor who examines a patient with stomach-ache, need more precise information before treatment can begin. If dyslalia is a defect of articulation there should be no insuperable problems over devising a sound-test to be used as a preliminary aid to treatment. There is Increasing evidence to encourage a profound change in our attitude towards dyslalic patients. It also becomes increasingly clear that we cannot say dyslalic speech is characterized by distortions of speech sounds.
