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From: Judy
Date: 19 Oct 2007
Time: 04:48:43 -0500
Remote Name: 70.22.163.191
Ashley, I think conversation can serve many purposes. One reason I enjoy observing/listening to conversation is that I think about what is going on behind the words, such as a speaker's hidden agenda. Books about how to be a sales person teach how to use conversation with the sole purpose of directing the listener into buying something. Long ago, I attended a dinner in which this was taking place and later learned that the conversation towards the end of the evening was when the sales representatives had "gone in for the kill." This fascinated me because, at the time, I had just been enjoying dinner. Clearly, conversation in a therapeutic situation does not have this kind of behind-the-scenes agenda!!! As a consumer in the US who confronts advertizing and sales pitches all the time, I must be aware that this agenda lies behind the narrative and carefully contrived interactions that appear in media. Back to your question. Conversation with the purpose of eliciting and respecting a client's speech, language, and message may be valuable in other areas of speech-language pathology. I do read about and attend workshops about other communication disorders because the children I see may have multiple concerns. But I don't feel I have the expertise in other disorders to write much about exactly how conversation would be used. The challange and reward of being an SLP is the opportunity to be creative when designing lessons. I hope you are in an employment setting that gives you this freedom. It sounds like you already have some ideas about how conversation could be used in other aspects of speech and language therapy. Thank you for your question and good luck!