speech (n.)

For the most part, the term is used in LINGUISTICS in its everyday sense, providing the subject with its primary DATA. There are two main interpretations of these data, which are complementary rather than opposed. One interpretation is from the viewpoint of PHONETICS: here, speech is seen as a MEDIUM of transmission for LANGUAGE – the spoken medium or PHONIC SUBSTANCE of language (as opposed to writing). It is in this context that the term is used as part of the label for the many devices available in instrumental phonetics, e.g. the speech stretcher (which presents a slowed but otherwise undistorted recording of speech). Speech science is the study of all the factors involved in the production, transmission and reception of speech; also called speech sciences or speech and hearing science. As well as phonetics, the study includes such subjects as anatomy, physiology, neurology and acoustics, as applied to speech.

The other interpretation is from the viewpoint of linguistics, where spoken language (PERFORMANCE, or PAROLE) can be analyzed in PHONOLOGICAL, GRAMMATICAL and SEMANTIC, as well as phonetic terms. It is in this sense that terms such as speech community are used, referring to any regionally or socially definable human group identified by a shared linguistic SYSTEM. The term SPEECH ACT, also, has a more abstract sense than its name suggests; it is not in fact an ‘act of speaking’, but the activity which the use of language performs or promotes in the listener (respectively, the ILLOCUTIONARY force and the PERLOCUTIONARY effect of the language). Similarly, the speech event is seen as the basic unit for the analysis of spoken interaction, i.e. the emphasis is on the role of the participants in constructing a DISCOURSE of verbal exchanges.

Phonetics and PSYCHOLINGUISTICS have come to pay increasing attention to constructing MODELS of the neurophysiological mechanisms hypothesized to underlie speech behavior. In this respect, two main branches of speech analysis have developed: speech production, involving the planning and execution of acts of speaking; and speech perception, involving the perception and interpretation of the sound sequences of speech. The term speech recognition (or speech reception) is used to identify the initial stage of the decoding process involved in speech perception – and also the automatic decoding of speech by machine. Speaker recognition is the analysis of speech to infer the identity of the speaker or to check a claimed identity (speaker verification). The whole activity of the perception and production of speech is known as speech processing.