Understanding American Sign Language

Imagine you have experienced a horrible accident resulting in significant damage to your brain. Due to your accident, you have lost your ability to express and understand the primary language that you have used to communicate your entire life. You can no longer say what you feel, or even understand what your family and doctors are trying to saying to you. Now imagine that your speech and language pathologist begins to introduce you to a completely non-verbal language that you start to understand. American Sign Language (ASL) is the language that deaf individuals use to communicate in their everyday life. This language is made up of gestures, word signs, hand classifiers, and facial expressions that are produced by the signer's body in order …show more content…
Aphasia impairs a person’s ability to hear, speak, read, and write. Those diagnosed with aphasia may also experience swallowing problems, dysarthria (difficulty to articulate speech), or apraxia (inability to perform actions needed to produce speech based on brain damage). The most common cause of aphasia is stroke, but any damage done to the left hemisphere including brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, or progressive neurological disorders can cause the communication disorder as well. Symptoms and severity of aphasia all depend on the person and the intensity of the brain damage. If an individual has damage to the front portion of their brain their language will be choppy and influent, however they are still able to understand what people are saying to them. If damage occurs in the posterior region of the brain they are able to speak fluently, in the sense that the rate and rhythm of the speech is normal, but they may just use made up words or words that don’t make sense in the context, and they have difficulty understanding what is being said to them. Treatments for aphasia vary and the amount of treatment needed is based off of the