Building Up Your Professional Network

We all know networking is important in any business, and that doesn't exclude speech-language pathology. But how are we supposed to find ways to build our professional network while partaking in classes and extracurricular activities? It can sometimes be an issue, especially for those that transfer (like me) or just aren't sure how to go about making professional contacts. Luckily, you can make a professional contact from almost anyone at any place and any time! Even if the person isn't a Speech-Language Pathologist, they can still be a valuable resource for other jobs or connecting with related professionals. Each person is another step closer to more people, as each connection shrinks your six degrees of separation.

The Usual Places:

Of course you can start with friends and family. Some might be in your field of study, others may not. Either way they may have a doctor or related professional in their network that can help you down the line. For example, your friend's mom might work at a school that is looking for a speech therapist when you graduate. Or she can even put in a good word for you when they aren't hiring so they can keep you in mind. Also consider your current job. Your boss and other coworkers can be valuable resources for information on available jobs elsewhere, and your boss can be a great reference. (So be a good worker and stay off your phone!) Another option would be the supervisors of your observations or volunteer experiences. The SLPs you shadow are of course a great place for networking, and if you manage to get a volunteer position or long-term observation scheduled there, they can be even more valuable. The longer, the better as they will get to know you at a deeper level. If you happen to stay in the area for grad school, then perhaps you can do a clinical placement there, which is good for CFY references (or doing your CFY there!)... This is wishful thinking, but helpful either way.

Of course there are also your professors and classmates. Going to office hours, volunteering in the lab, doing a thesis or small research project, or being a teaching assistant can be great ways to get to know your professor. Once they know you well enough, they can be a reference or even tell you of good schools or employment options to look into when the time comes. Classmates are also great. Even those who aren't in the major (catching on to the theme?). All of them can have ties.
One example: I recently rented an apartment with 3 nursing majors. They told me of patient care technician jobs that had openings where I would do basic care that didn't require certification, just a high school degree. It's not 100% SLP, but it is still in the medical field and hands-on with patients, so those jobs could've helped with my resume. If I hadn't roomed with them I wouldn't have known that the hospital had jobs like these!)


One Step Further:

Your school's career development office in an invaluable resource! I can't stress this enough. If your school has a well-made career development office, then you should be able to find some internships through them. There probably won't be any for SLP, but definitely some for related fields or organizations that aid disabled people. Interning at these places is sure to expand your connections. Your career development office might also have  alumni or local connections for students to talk to. Mine has a database that you can search for professionals that are alumni of the school that are willing to talk to students. If you can find something like this in your school, use it and find a professional to talk to and get to know.

ASHA also has some mentoring and development programs. If you look at their site, there are some for minorities, research, learning about a speciality, or just to learn more about a certain aspect of SLP. If you sign up and happen to be accepted, these programs can provide a great professional network for you to learn from.

Social media like Twitter, LinkedIn,and even blogs or forums can help you find like-minded people to talk to. Twitter now has a host of chats and hashtags related to our field that you can follow and partake in to learn about this field and maybe make a few friends and professional contacts. In fact, I recently participated a WeSpeechies chat and talked to a few students and professionals from Australia and abroad! Many blogs are also on Twitter, so you can talk to their author and catch up on info they post about. LinkedIn has several groups that even students can join. If you'd like more information on all the social media outlets you can check out this post and also this one.

Special events like talks, conventions and networking get-togethers have a plethora of professionals that you can meet and chat with. The linguistics club that I'm a leader in recently had Bill Labov speak (he's a big name if you're in that field), so I actually got to meet him! If you're interested in a specific subfield of SLP like neurogenic disorders or autism, then consider going to a talk that a professor or professional is giving. Just look for details from a local organization or your school's Neuroscience department (for neurogenic topics). If you like the person's research, then go up an talk to him/her and discuss how you can get involved. Of course, conventions, like the annual ASHA convention, ASHA Schools Convention or your state's convention will have many professionals that you can talk to. Like I said, if you are interested in a specialty, try to find a convention of a related organization to meet other professionals with a non-speech pathology point-of-view.


*Of course, as with any relationship, this isn't a one-sided thing. Don't expect that talking to someone one time will give them the drive to help you find a job or give a reference for a grad school interview. They might not even remember you if you met at a convention. You should bring something to the table or continue talking to them and discussing their research, if applicable. Don't go hoarding contacts either, you want to have strong connections, not 1,000 acquaintances.

Perception of Words and Their Weight

Have you ever thought about how certain words, and more specifically the sounds within them, play a role in our perception of what that word symbolizes? Part of this concept is called 'sound symbolism', where certain sounds can convert different perceptions. It's an interesting topic, and has been researched by several different fields. It's even recently caught the eye of a Reader's Digest writer, Alison Caporimo, who wrote a little ditty on this concept in the December 2013 issue (page 55).

She mentioned that researchers from NYU used the pseudo-words 'frish' and 'frosh' to describe a fake product and asked subjects to rate which they thought seemed like more of an ice cream brand. Can you guess which fake word subjects felt more keen to eat as a snack food? Frosh.

Now why is this? Caporimo goes on to state that these researchers believe that it is due to something deemed as the "Frequency Code". This term has been used by other researchers, even  as early as 1994 by John J. Ohala, a UC Berkley Linguistics professor. It is used to describe the phenomenon of associating front vowels (like 'i') with smaller (and thus healthier) things. Following suit, this is why words with back vowels like 'frosh' sound heavier, creamier and/or bigger.

It does make sense, as our oral cavity is much smaller when creating the front sounds, which could partially be the reason why we associate words with these sounds as 'smaller' or 'lighter'. Whereas, when we create sounds that are further back, our oral cavity is larger and we even open our mouth more, relating to larger, heavier objects that take up more space. At least, that's what I think.

Although this concept isn't 100% speech-language pathology related, what do you guys think? Conjure up some words that fit this or even some that don't. I believe most food brands follow suit with this. John J. Ohala even mentions in his article that it is seen cross-linguistically and he showed similarities in the vowels of words meaning "large" and "small" across several languages, it's worth a check (Table 22.2, page 336).

This does come with a  disclaimer that the author of the Reader's Digest article didn't mention who the NYU researchers were or provide a reference. I tried to find who they were for referencing through some online research, but couldn't. I did find John J. Ohala's article that discusses this concept, and other linguistic phenomena, that contribute to sound symbolism. There is a research article by two Marketing professors, one of which is from NYU, that used the terms 'fresh' and 'frosh' in their research... so perhaps that is who Caporimo is referring to? I've added it below.


Reader's Digest Article: http://www.rd.com/culture/experts-explain-why-certain-words-sound-fat/

John J. Ohala, "The frequency codes underlies the sound-symbolic use of voice pitch" : http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ohala/papers/freq_code.pdf

Eric Yorkston & Geeta Menon, "A Sound Idea: Phonetic Effects of Brand Names on Consumer Judgments" : http://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist62n/yorkston.pdf


* I'd also like to thank my lovely mother, who is an avid reader of several magazines and found this article. She's always looking out for linguistics and speech/medical related articles for me. :)


There is also a disclaimer that I wasn't paid by any of these people or their affiliated organizations or publications. This is solely a reflection of my own interest in this subject and the desire to share this information with others.

What'd Ya Say? Wednesday: Vocal Fry

Only a mere year ago I was sitting in my first Linguistics class, Introduction to Linguistics. My teacher was an enthusiastic grad student who had an interest in sociolinguistics. Basically, that means he was interested in how society affects language (vocabulary, sounds, pronunciation, etc.) A few examples of this would be studying African American Vernacular or Gay Speech, and see how those subcultures utilize language in different ways than the umbrella culture. After a few months and learning the basics of linguistics, we began to talk about dialects, sociolinguistics, etc. One thing that came up was this new "trend" of the vocal fry, which is often seen in younger female speech as of right now.



What is the vocal fry you ask? Think back to hearing your daughter, niece, neighbor speak. Or better yet, have you heard Ke$ha or Brittany Spears talk? This vocalization is illustrated when people tend to draw out the end of their sentence in a low, vibrating tone. Perhaps a video could better explain it, so here's an example for you to listen to (although she exaggerates it greatly): Does it make sense now? Some say that it's become a trend that's pioneering new speech patterns, especially since girls tend to use it for social acceptance or to show irritation (at least I think). After all, other speech patterns have caught on over the past decades, or at least gained attention/knowledge.



As she states, this is pretty bad. Not only for other's ears and sanity, but for the speaker's vocal health as well. The vocal folds are meant to vibrate to pronounce voiced sounds, such as [z], [b] and [g]. This is only meant for short bursts and the vibration isn't as rough. On the other hand, the vocal fry makes the sound elongated and has the vocal folds hitting each other more for a longer time. In fact, Speech Language Pathologists used to help people who did this, considering it as a slight voice impediment. There's debate as to if it is completely harmful(or at least long-term), but I'd think it would at least somewhat bad if kept up for a long time. I wonder if we could look in and see if there's any irritation there.



So what do you think... epidemic or natural? Safe, hazardous, or neither?

What'd Ya Say? Wednesday: Speech Accent Archive

Hey all, I've found this nifty little ditty while rummaging through the internet the other day, and I think it's great! This will come in handy for anyone working with a bilingual, multilingual or foreign speech therapy client. It's called the Speech Accent Archive, and it has a few forms that you can use to find out more information on foreign languages and pronunciation... it even gives the PHONETIC inventory for each language (and there are lotsss of languages on this site. I probably haven't even 80% of them.) Of course, American Sign Language doesn't have a phonetic (sound) alphabet, but it is listed on this website under the search page.

One of the neat things this website has, is the ability to browse. You can browse by speaker/language, the region of the native language or you can look up the language's native phonetic inventory... which I think is very helpful, especially in accent modification!

Under the search area, you can even put in the onset of the speaker starting English, what language is native to that person, how that person learned English (naturally or academically), how long the client has spoken English, if they have any generalizations, etc.

The resources page also has some 'phonetic generalizations' that would be helpful for Speech-Language Pathologists working with clients of native languages other than English.



Definitely give it a look at. Even if you just want to play around! (The linguist in me is giddy with this new find!)

Schwa Has One Good Life...

Here's a quick little linguistic joke since the weekend is just about there! Time for some (minor) relaxation! I just love these "Linguist Llama" memes... some are quite funny.:)

On a side note: I've finally got some responses back on possible SLP shadow opportunities! Now I just need to get some more responses, as well as some volunteer placements and I'll be one happy lady this semester!