Multicultural issues in speech evaluation
(2-4-11)

"To appropriately provide differential diagnosis to culturally and linguistically diverse populations, communications disorders must be defined within the context of the client's cultural and linguistic community. They must be distinguished from social dialects and variables expected because of normal development." (Battle, 1998, pp. 6-7)

Battle (1998, p. 7) offers Taylor's view of a "culturally sensitive definition" of communication disorder:

(a) deviates sufficiently from the norms, expectations and definitions of the indigenous culture or language group;
(b) is considered to be disordered by the indigenous culture or language group;
(c) operates outside of the minimal norms of acceptability of that culture or language group;
(d) interferes with communication within the indigenous culture or language group; or
(e) calls attention to itself within the indigenous culture or language group (Taylor, 1986, p. 13)

Gives example of low vocal intensity that might be diagnosed as voice disorder for speaker of Standard American English (SAE), but would not be considered a problem in some Asian cultures, such as Chinese or Indian

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in their Position Paper on Social Dialects (ASLHA, 1982) took the position that no dialectal variety of English is a disorder or pathological form of speech or language: "Therefore, a person who uses a social dialect that is appropriate to his or her indigenous community should not be identified as having a communication disorder." (Battle, 1998, p. 9)

African American English (AAE) is used in many, not all, working-class African American families in informal speaking situations. There are distinctive differences between SAE and AAE in intonation pattern, speaking rate, lexicon, consonant and vowel patterns, and word choice (Battle, 1998). "A common error in diagnosis of phonologic and morphologic development in African American children is that all differences observed are related to the use of AAE." (Battle, 1998, p. 9)