Saturday, July 20, 2013

Satircal Speech Stuff


Language is of central importance to the human condition as it currently exists.  Speech pathology, body language, nonverbal behavior are all fields unto themselves.  Without language communication is essentially limited to the concrete realities of daily life, a finite and limited recursiveness.  But with linguistic communication, complete with its pronunciations, tonality, nuanced meaning, emotional components, abstractions, and congruence between its own infinite facets so much more is possible. It is upon and from this simple and ancient technology we call language that all other modernality has sprung.  Organization necessary from society for survival may have been possible without language, but with the sustenance of language society could be sustained and nurtured.  Flourishing through civilization's and education's birth, beginning the foundations for constructing all that we see (and do not see) around us today, as a product of our collective effort and knowledge.  While it has yet to be proven whether or not humanity is sustainable, language is central to maintaining society, civilization, and our population; it is as circular a logic as language itself is (or at least that is what Chomsky is famous for having proposed), indeed synonyms can be chained together until the final synonym is the antonym of the original synonym.  It is for this reason that education, and language are of importance to all of us, how else could you, the reader, read this?  Language and communication can be a problem for any of us, at any point in life, and for a myriad of reasons.  Speaking, public or otherwise, is often considered a talent, and like all talents it must be honed, maintained, and can be improved, often via the means and methods of behavior modification and behaviorism in general.  Language is something we all use every day to survive, this behavior modification program outline, and any others like it, are only of importance to those who wish to improve, to become better.  It all started somewhere, so where better to start than with children eager to learn, grow, and live as they see the rest of us do.  This program only has a beginning, it can have no end, only change is possible.

The primary purpose of this operant behavior modification project is twofold in its goal to motivate children to speak and verbalize rather than express unbridled emotion while providing appropriate levels of frustration necessary to motivate progress and illuminate the joy of epiphany.  It could be noted that some Charismatics and performers never learn that which is not communication, speaking in tongues or singing in scat, some people even enjoy it;)

First this operant behavior modification projects’ aim is to extinguish traditionally non productive vocalizations by shaping them into linguistically and contextually appropriate communications.  Secondly it focuses on the three quarters of positive psychology in positive punishment, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement.  As noted in the opening paragraph language is central to modern life, to that end the behavior or lack of the behavior is a problem for all of us. Especially the frustrated individual who cannot speak, just think of the Helen Keller story;  From this point on the frustrated individual of limited speech capability, be it myself, the reader, or someone else, will be referred to as the client.  
The linguistic educational trainers, otherwise referred to as administrators of the behavior modification program or project as the case maybe once they are hired, chosen to work with the children clients must be able to correctly define at least 400,000 words from the English language so as not to limit the clients vocabulary, the words should be defined emotionally, socially, culturally and technically so as to insure the training is appropriate and in the best interests of the client.  If the educator is inadequate the behavior modification program will be inadequate and the results will be inadequate.  If the behavior modification program is inadequate then it is not in the best interest of the client; choosing administrators and educators for the program is of the utmost importance.  For this reason hearing tests should also be administered to ensure that the understanding of the exact frequencies, durations, tones, timbre, enunciation of every phoneme are accurate, for practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.  And anything less is unacceptable because it would not be in the clients best interest.  The educators should also be tested to ensure they are not caught up by tongue twisters, tonality or timbre; professionally trained singers maybe adequate but further testing and review should be applied to remove any potentially negligent candidates.  Elitists should also be avoided.  It is not enough for the administrator of the behavior modification program to have absolute control of oneself, the self control must also be correct for all possible situations where the verbalization maybe used in the future.  To undertake a behavior modification program without correct absolute self control is criminally negligent not only to the client, but to the society and culture in which both the child client and administrator of the behavior modification program live.
The target behavior will be limited to the native language, in this instance, and for this example Modern American English that nightly news casters implement should suffice.  For that reason everyone involved should have excellent hearing, pronunciation, and grasp of the modern American English language.  Do not confuse the children by explaining the English-ification of Latin by reversing the oral motions as often exampled in phil and love or other cockney slang.  Some adults still speak gibberish for example, when some adults become upset with their baby mama they may tend to give her the ritabitagitakabanama, it communicates the idea by a failure of communication. Also scat singers, beat boxers, charismatic’s, or people who speak in tongues, would not be suitable for such knowledge as it is lost in understanding.  For this reason the participant society must be whittled away in an iterative and recursive pattern to ensure they understand the morphemes, phonemes, glottals, pronunciations, cognition, and listening necessary to communicate intimately prior to engaging in the pedagogy of linguistics, and to ensure the chosen individuals are motivated and want to participate.  It is not enough to do it for the benefit of the client, the client should want to do it for themselves, for their own motivations, whatever they maybe.  
The target behavior can range from a phoneme for an infant, to a word for a toddler, to a sentence for a small child.  The important characteristics are:
1.      Proper formation of the phonemes in the mouth for each sound 
2.      Grouping of the phonemes together for each word.
3.      Structuring the appropriate words for each sentence.
If it sounds like a word, the sentence makes sense in terms of grammatical and natural language processing, and the action following it is consistent it is modern communication, just like asking mom for cookies and milk is a happy memory when it all works out because then we can communicate, interact, and work together to meet each other’s needs.  Anything that sounds like gibberish, or not a word, is a behavior to be modified.  An upset child client yelling AAaaa! Is excellent for shaping into the word “angry” as the child client is already making the “A” sound necessary to begin the word, and has the appropriate emotional state to be conditioned and associated with the word “angry”.  Modeling for the client is important in closing off the ‘A’ sound with the tongue and throat.  An ‘A’ sound is emotional, as most vowel sounds are, luckily the ‘A’ sound leaves the mouth wide open so that the tongue motion for the ‘N’ through ‘G’ sweep can be shown,displayed, and repeated as part of the shaping process to the child client by the administrator of the behavior modification project in order to slowly and repetitively produce the first syllable as a collection of phonemes that make up the morpheme of ‘ANG’.  Then the second syllable beginning with ‘R’ can be undertook before the Y;  although it should be noted that in some situations the administrator of the behavior modification project may choose to start at the end of the word, the beginning of the word, or present the entire word as they see fit while remaining within the original contexts of maintaining, emotional, social, and technical viability for the client consistent with the learning style of that particular child client in order to appropriately take the language beyond where they are and within where they want to be.  This depends on the sounds the child client is presenting, the emotional interpretation and extrapolation of the emotional expression to that which is acceptable culturally; then the appropriate word to be shaped to can be chosen from the vocabulary of the administrator of the behavior modification program, by the administrator of the behavior modification project for the child client.  The administrator of the behavior modification program must reach the emotional state of the client so the client can relate and access the shaping techniques of modeling that are semi vicarious.  Through successive recursive iterations the administrator must keep pace with the client, not set the pace for the client, display frustration, or any judgmental communication nonverbal or otherwise, as they work through the oral formations of the word ‘angry’ in response to the clients initial phoneme and emotional state.  For this reason the process will take decades for 99% of the populations’ individuals.  Ideally these individuals will realize at some point in their lives how imperfect they are and take task upon themselves and their own self improvement, just as their peers will do to them in some form of linguistic matching that naturally occurs in any and all communication contexts.  


If the client child is angry and yelling something closer an ‘U’ or ‘O’ sound the word ‘upset’ might be better to model and begin.  A list of every phoneme, morpheme, and word or complex consonant grouping should be attained in the initial investigation for categorization, and this is where it would be operationally implemented and related through the ‘U’ or ‘O’ phoneme behavior presented.  Luckily ‘U’ ‘O’ is tightly closed, unable to see the glottal’s of usurp or orangutan the ‘P’ of upset is at the lips as is the ‘S’ to follow at the beginning of the next phoneme after the morpheme of ‘UP’.  ‘E’ also opens the lips wide enough to shed light on the final ‘T’.
For practical purposes there are an infinite number of nuanced differences in producible sound combinations which is what makes narrowing the band of communicable sound all the more incredible. 
The client is free to quit at any point, body language is especially important in determining the cognition present in clients who cannot yet speak.  Body language can be culturally dependent therefore the mannerisms of the parents or applicable authority figure should be investigated prior to implementation of the behavior modification program to ensure accurate, precise, reliable, and  valid inputs to assist in the shaping of the clients linguistic voice.  Clients will only become more capable in terms of planning and participating as the program and project progress.
To ensure accuracy, precision, reliability and validity electronic equipment can be used to record audio and video.  This will also empower the assessment of the accuracy of observations and future review.  Mannerisms, language, tone, and other variables of both the child client and administrator of the behavior modification project can be tracked, recorded, and mathematically analyzed to measure uptake, mirroring, and behavior extrapolation by the child clients as well as the administrators of the behavior modification project as demonstrated in session, by self reported by administrators of the behavior modification project, or as observed by authority figures of the child clients; this is especially important if the caregivers, authority figures, and administrators experience any turn over or are not the same person.  Training should include DIBELS Phoneme Segmentation Fluency assessment of administrators of the behavior modification program.  Training and review will include the (2005) The International Phonetic Alphabet:


The International Phonetic Alphabet will be used to identify, categorize, and relate the sounds produced in communication, formation, shaping, structure, tone, timing, duration, and rhythm of consonants and vowels to its production through the iterative and recursive processes of fading and shaping necessary to model the characteristic phenomenological mechanics necessary for each individual sound. 
Initial assessment of each child will include a video interview of continuous recording that can later be broken down into time sampling recording for each individual presentation of each phoneme behavior necessary for the initial identification phase.  Video assessment can be of any duration, anywhere, anytime, or anyone in front of a camera. Next phase is categorization process including an inventory of what is present in terms of linguistic capabilities previously listed and what is required or desired on a case by case basis.  Relation includes program and project design development; The program should allow for guidelines empowering aleatoric operation and flexibility of the moment by moment project.  Lists of words based on emotional state, phenomenological items present,  
Wavelength of sounds can be measured in hertz.  Motion related to body language can be measured relative to individuals clients’ and administrators of the behavior modification project biophysical characteristics, accelerations, and ratios.  Sound can be measure in decibels.  Sound can also be measured by partial differentials of inflection and intensity; frequency modulation can be recorded and analyzed as well as harmonies, tonality, pitch, timbre, and other psychometric acoustical properties.  Although it should be noted that these properties can be a partial function of the room in which they occur, the location of furniture, of other people, and of recording equipment as well as the orientation of these things acting as potential confounding variables.  Target sounds are different for various languages and even within dialects and accents within a language. 
Stimulus controls are different for everyone, as is duration, and latency each should be ascertained for every client, often the most efficient method is a natural random selection that does not wear out any one stimulus.  Allowing the environment and individual to exist naturally and symbiotically rather than breaking down into subject and object nomenclature.  Desired frequency is constant for phenomenological formation, word usage, and sentence structure in order to empower consistent effective and efficient communication.  Clients only get what they pay for. 

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