There are many things in life in which we take advantage of for having. Often times these things can be separated from region to region due to financial stability. In America, we take advantage of the water we drink, food we eat, and clothes we wear, but in third-world countries, these are things they are forever grateful for, and more times than none do not have the ability to enjoy them. Sometimes we take advantage of family members and friends, of the nature around us, and our ability to act and think. But what about language? Language is our way of communicating between one another being able to express ideas, feelings, and thoughts. Language can be processed through more than just the obvious spoken and verbal way. It can also be transferred through writings and drawings, as well as being signed. The way in which language is processed and understood is explained within the neural pathways and connections. The cerebral cortex of the dominant hemisphere is where studies have shown most language processing occurs. Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are two well-identified areas that are considered vital for human communication, however, many other areas and properties of the brain play a major role in language production and relatedness. Unfortunately, because so much of the brain plays a role in language, unfortunate circumstances such as tumors, seizures, aneurisms, traumatic blows to the head, etc. can cause temporary or permanent damage affecting language.

Alcohol is a less permanent way of taking away our accuracy of presenting language. Alcohol is a depressant, meaning that the processing in our central nervous system is slowed down. This can cause hazy thinking, poor memory, weakened muscles (including the impairing of vision and/or hearing), and altered speech. The slurred speech is a symptom from the weakening of the muscles. Our tongue, one of the strongest muscles in our body, often time’s become uncontrollable by restricting blood flow to muscles and lowering inhibition. In addition to the cognitive and behavioral affects from drinking on just a casual night out, these affects can worsen and become more serve with alcoholism. Alcoholism is defined as an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency. Differences between language in one suffering with alcoholism and one who is not can be seen through syntactic performance, prosody comprehension, and unfortunately through the development of their offspring as well.

In the past, there has been research studying the symptomology of alcohol consumption and behaviors other than linguistic, as well as controlled alcohol consumption and communicative ability, however, there has not been much study on chronic alcohol ingestion and syntax. A study by Collins worked to examine this phenomenon. This study examines adult syntax comparing the syntactic performance of alcoholic and non-alcoholic adults. While both alcoholic and non-alcoholic subjects displayed generally similar patterns of syntactic performance, alcoholic scores were generally lower. Non-alcoholics tended to use more advanced grammatical forms and, in addition, displayed a greater frequency of sentence completeness than did the alcoholic subjects. Alcoholics committed nearly twice as many errors as did non-alcoholics. An interesting finding.. The possibility of an alcoholic integrative language deficit is further supported by the alcoholics’ greater dependence on the wh-question. Wh questions are those that begin with words such as “who, what, where, when, why, etc. The alcoholic’s greater dependence on the wh-question, as compared to the non- alcoholic comes from the idea that in this situation, the subject was obliged to provide information rather than seek it. This seems to be an indicative of a decline in the integrative aspect of language processing (Collins, 1980). With these results being the most supportive, it was explained that there is a deficiency on the part of the alcoholic in the integrative and descriptive aspects of oral language performance, concluding that chronic alcohol ingestion negatively impacts language behavior.

Affective prosody further gives meaning to speech for listeners with the use of pauses and the stress of certain words. Affective prosody also includes aspects of tone, pitch, and loudness, being able to convert both emotion and attitude. In class, we looked into how certain illnesses can affect prosody including congenital amusia (Thompson, 2012) and autism (Grossman, 2010), but others such as schizophrenia and alcoholism also have a great impact on affective prosody. A study conducted by Monnot, et al., explored the possibility that affective prosodic functioning may be sensitive to the effects of alcohol due to heavy persistent drinking. This question arose from the information known that affective prosody is a dominant function in the right hemisphere and previous research has found that other skills associated with the RH have been impaired in alcoholics (Monnot et al., 2001). Alcoholic subjects were significantly less accurate when compared to control groups when it came to affective prosodic comprehension (APC) (Monnot et al., 2001). This finding suggests that alcohol exposed subjects appear to be deficient in the ability to understand emotional aspects in the speech of others. This inability results in errors of judgment. As I am sure one could assume, mixing alcohol, and errors of judgment can cause impairments in social interactions, and can be concluded as the reasoning behind many aggressive outcomes from drinking excessively. This study found this impairment to be seen in not only those suffering from alcoholism themselves, but those exposed prenatally as well.

Prenatal Alcohol Exposure, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder happens when a mother who is pregnant continues to consume alcoholic beverages at a rate too high. This can cause the baby to develop birth defects and neurodevelopment abnormalities. This preventable disease can also cause a range of developmental, cognitive, and behavioral problems. These problems can occur beginning at birth, and some may even last a lifetime. Language and speech acquisition, unfortunately, are just a couple of the affected cognitive outcomes that come from this preventable condition. In a study conducted in 1990 by Green and his colleagues, the effects of FAE on language and speech acquisition were investigated. Unfortunately, not so surprisingly, these kids came from a socioeconomic disadvantaged urban upbringing, for one would hope that someone with the ability to attend regular pregnancy appointments would know enough not to be drinking. Their language development was assessed longitudinally at 1,2, and 3 years old, with indicators of fetal alcohol damage including birth weight, and craniofacial anomalies. The results suggested that the craniofacial anomalies and birth weight are more sensitive indicators of fetal alcohol exposure than subsequent language development (Green, 1990). However, this study was conducted at the young age of these children where language varies already from child to child. It would be interesting to look into any language delays in children older.

As mentioned in the title of the disorder, FASD, there is a spectrum of severity when diagnosed. Although there was not significant sensitivity to subsequent language development and prenatal alcohol exposure in the first article, looking into different subtypes including age and exposure may play and important role. A population-based study was conducted to evaluate the language abilities involving school aged children (between 5-18 years old) who were diagnosed with FASD. Poor performance was found throughout, across both expressive and receptive language abilities. A total of 70% of the participants fell under the “severe” language range indicating significant impairments in communication. Only 15% of the participants fell into the “average” language range. These intense and unfortunate finding suggest that language development is significantly affected by prenatal alcohol exposure (Proven et al., 2014). With such high numbers being drawn from this article, it is scary to look at the life long problems that the offspring can develop. Falling into the “severe” category offers an idea into the difficult life one must live, falling far behind in academics and education.

Now, having an insight to the cognitive affects of casual drinking, the long term affects of language deficiency and alcoholism, and the offspring affects of pregnancy drinking, it is unfortunate to see how alcohol still plays a dangerous and abused role in our society. As mentioned, language is an every day activity, in which we often times take for granted. Language allows us to communicate, express our emotions, relay information, and even excel and progress in school and development. With just the sole topic of alcohol playing such a major role in the ability to carry out such a casual experience, it is interesting to look into other topics, which play connecting and major roles into language as well. Or even what other experiences alcohol may affect that we seem to overlook, as well.

Works Cited:

Collins, P.J. (1980). A Comparison of the Oral Syntactic Performance of Alcoholic and Non         Alcoholic Adults. Language and Speech (23) 3.

Green, T., Emhart, C.B., Martier, S., Sokol, R., Ager, J. (1990). Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and    Language Development. Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research. (14) 6, 937    -945.

Grossman, R.B., Bemis, R.H., Skwerer, D.P., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2010). Lexical and     affective prosody in children with high-functioning autism. Journal of Speech,       Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 778–793.

Monnot, M., Nixon, S., Lovallo, W., Ross, E. (2001). Altered Emotional Perception in      Alcoholics: Deficits in Affective Prosody Comprehension. Alcoholism Clinical and          Experimental Research. (25) 3.

Proven, S., Ens, C., Beaudin, P.G. (2014). The Language Profile of School-Aged Children with      Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Canadian Journal of Speech-Language  Pathology & Audiology. (37) 4.

Thompson, W.F., Marin, M.M., & Stewart, L. (2012). Reduced sensitivity to emotional  prosody in congenital amusia rekindles the musical protolanguage            hypothesis. PNAS,      109, 19027-19032.