Basic Overview

In this blog I have taken it upon myself to give a quick outline of what you may read in this blog:

1. What is a lisp?

A speech inpediment also known as sigmatism.


2. Ways to cure lisping:

- Speech training
(Visit your local Speech Pathologist)
- Practice, practice practice
(eg. Practice until the "sh" sound is replaced by the proper "s" sound)
- Read aloud to yourself which might help you RELAX and gain CONFIDENCE in yourself. Look at it this way gaining confidence in yourself is one of the essential factors of speaking publicly.


3. Assumptions:

Many people believe that:
- Because of a longer tongue that is the cause of lisping.
- If they do not learn to pronounce all consonants properly by the age of 5 or 6, they will never master the articulation properly.
- It makes it hard for people to take them seriously (because they notice the lisp).
- It has something to do with your teeth.
- If a man has a lisp he's gay
- It may be because of the autism spectrum of the brain.


4. Causes of having a lisp:

- Being afraid to speak in public
- Becoming stressed knowing that you have a speaking problem
- Gaining a since of feeling uncomfortable or tense
- Tearing up/Crying
- Worrying about what people think

The Prevalence of Lisping in Young Adults

This next article I read, "The Prevalence of Lisping in Young Adults" by: John Van Borsel located in the Journal of Communication Disorders, talks about a study that was performed on various young adults of students of Ghent University in Belgium whom would be enrolled in speech language pathology. The study was done because the the frontal lisping s and z was still present in their speech. 748 students, ages 18-22, were put through the test of being videotaped while reading "The North Wind of the Sun..." There were no noticeable difference between females and males that lisped however there came out to be a 23.3% prevalence of lisping. Of those diagnosed with lisping, the females where more aware of their lisping than men.

The Prevalence of Lisping in Gay Men

The journal entry that I read was called, "The Prevalence of Lisping in Gay Men." located in the Journal of Communication Disorders, March 2009 issue by John Van Borsel. Starting off, the author starts the article with a statement reflecting lisping in children and around what age lisping is considered a speech disorder. I learned something that I never really paid any attention to or thought about in depth when researching my Blog subject. Not at anytime, did I think that lisping had anything to do with gay men. According to the article, there has been various studies on gay men reflecting their speech levels, articulatory behavior, and lisping in their speech. In the speech level test, gay men speech levels where compared to heterosexual men. The studiers wanted to find if there would be a difference in levels in their speeches, ending results found no difference in the speech levels. Lisping in gay men would show somewhat of a difference between gay men and heterosexual men. 175 gay male, 100 heterosexual, and 100 heterosexual female participants were used in this study. The ending results showed that in gay males their was a higher usage of lisping in the younger age group than in the older age group.

Understanding Lisping in Children

The only website that I chose to talk about that I feel that really is parent oriented, focuses mainly on the lisp disorder in children.

Mindy Hudon, M.S., CCC-SLP takes her readers on a journey to her past, on her first hand experience with lisps. She recalls on Saturday mornings watching Daffy and Sylvester the Pussycat cartoons ad how she would gain enjoyment from watching them talk.

Then by using them and referring to their speech disorders as lisping, she goes in on the different types of lisps, what causes them and what to do about the condition.

http://www.preschoolerstoday.com/resources/articles/lisp.htm

Lisping/ Caroline Bowen

This next article goes into depth a little more about the 4 different types of Lisps. It even features different 's' and 'z' pictures to use in order to determine if in fact someone does actually have a lisp (I thought that that was very interesting and neat).

Now if you were to visit this page and scrolled about 3/4 of the page down you will see in big blue words "Therapy" now unlike other websites that only tell you whom you should visit in order to help assist you in fixing you or your child's lisp disorder, this section tells you what all is done if you were to visit a doctor. It goes through the step by step process, giving the potential visitor descriptive information and basically what to expect.

The author of this website goes into a little more greater detail than most giving examples and pictures, check it out and see for yourself, http://www.members.tripod.com/Caroline_Bowen/lisping.htm

Lisp-Speech Disorder (UK)

Speech disorder(UK) website is an expert ran website that features skillful information that experts use to provide helpful information to individuals who would like to know about the causes of various different speech disorders. This website features information pertaining what causes these impairments, what type of speech therapy organizations to in role in for what speech defect, also an ask the experts section, as well as many other informative links/tabs.

In my section (Lisp) the site focuses on 3 major parts: What is a lisp, types of lisps, and treating lisps. While reading through the page I came to find some pretty interesting information: at the beginning of my lisp quest I did not know that there were different types of lisps. Actually there are 4, interdental lisps, dentalised lisps, lateral lisps, and palatal lisps, each of these are explained on the site.

I would recommend this website to anyone who lacks accurate information about whatever speech disorder they wanted to know about. This website http://www.speechdisorder.co.uk/Lisps.html is well organized and appropriate to its readers. At no time will you feel lost or confused at the information presented in front of you.

What this Blog Will Feature

Well in this blog, as you already can tell, my topic focuses on lisps. The contents of my topic will be as followed: what is a lisp, what causes it, and how to treat it.