SELF-MONITORING

The process of checking one’s own language productions to ensure that they are: (a) accurate in terms of syntax, lexis and phonology; (b) appropriate in terms of register; (c) at an acceptable level of speed, loudness and precision; (d) likely to be clear to the listener/reader; and (e) likely to have the desired rhetorical impact.

It seems unlikely that a speaker can focus on all these criteria simultaneously. Indeed, many speech errors (possibly over half) are not repaired. It is difficult to say whether a particular error has not been detected or whether the speaker felt that it was not worth interrupting the flow of speech to deal with it. However, the balance of evidence suggests that self-monitoring is selective. Research has found that speakers are more aware of errors that are closely linked to the prevailing context or to the task in hand. Speakers also identify with the listener in that they are more likely to correct an error that is likely to impair understanding than one that is not.

 Furthermore, the attention committed to self-monitoring seems to fluctuate during the course of an utterance: errors are detected and repaired much more often when they occur towards the end of a clause. This finding suggests that the weight of attention during the early part of the unit of utterance is directed towards executing the speech plan, but that, once the plan is running, the speaker has spare attentional capacity for evaluating the output.

Evidence from repairs indicates two different points at which self-monitoring occurs. A speaker engages in pre-articulatory editing, when they check if their speech plan has been correctly assembled before putting it into effect. They also scan their speech while it is being uttered. Editor theories propose that the first kind of self-monitoring takes place at each successive stage of planning (syntactic, lexical, phonological, articulatory). However, this would impose an enormous processing burden. Other commentators have concluded that the prearticulatory editor does not operate at all levels of planning but only at a late stage before production. This view is supported by evidence from experiments in which subjects are coaxed into uttering taboo words.

Levelt (1989) suggests that the two types of self-monitoring involve similar processes, two perceptual loops. In the first, the speaker attends to internal speech (a ‘voice in the head’ in the form of a phonetic plan which is the outcome of speech planning). In the second, they attend to overt speech. Both operations feed in to the same speech comprehension system as is used for processing the speech of others. This account faces the objection that the errors detected in a speaker’s own speech are often different in kind from those detected in the speech of others. However, this may be due to the different goals of the speaker, who wishes to ensure that the forms of language produced conform to a plan, and the listener, for whom errors of form are secondary to the extraction of meaning.

See also: Planning: speech, Repair2, Speech production

Further reading: Levelt (1989: Chap. 12)

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Schematic systems

Semantic structure

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