Word Salad

[INRM]

How does word-salad happen? Is the person using word-salad aware of the speech abnormality like in some Aphasias or not?

If no, how are they not aware?

[Dancing David]

There are manyw ays to get word salad, loose association ins chizophrenia and bipolar disorder are some. Often they are just jumping fromn topic to topic, but not making the segue between thoughts.

George Bush is a great leafy shrub, rub a dub dub the mix tape me up Scotty.

[Gate2501]

It is one of three things.

1. The subject is deliberately attempting to obfuscate their speech so that it is harder to attack (you can't make a coherent attack against incoherent speech/text, other than to point out that it is in fact, word salad).

2. The subject is attempting to appeal to less educated individuals that will latch onto complex language that they do not fully understand, thinking that the speaker/author is some manner of genius. The readers may also incorrectly interpret the word salad to mean something very grandiose or mysterious, a sort of secret knowledge. This is attractive to many wingnuts.

3. The subject IS the type of person that subject 2 was/is attempting to appeal to. They see deep philosophical meaning in their own word salad, however due to the fact that they are working from their own wacky definitions for the words contained within the salad, no one else can read it without a translation from the author. The problem with that, is that the author is usually a complete moonbat in this case and getting a sensible translation will be much like attempting to teach a pet snake to play fetch.

[blutoski]

Originally Posted by INRM

How does word-salad happen? Is the person using word-salad aware of the speech abnormality like in some Aphasias or not?

If no, how are they not aware?

If you're talking about psychosis, then it's sort of a self-answering question. It makes sense to the speaker, so they're not aware there's a problem.

The underlying cause is a cognitive malfunction.

[Dr. Imago]

Wernicke's aphasia is the most interesting to me. In the Neuro ICU wards taking care of stroke and brain injured patients, I've seen this a fair number of times. They just can't get any cogent, coherent speech out. The most interesting thing is that some of these patients, the less catastrophically injured ones, seem to understand what you are saying and will otherwise follow commands. This is often the result of injury to the frontotemporal cortex on the speech-dominant side of the brain (usually the left) in the distribution area of the middle cerebral artery.

I would best describe some of the speech I've heard from Wernicke's aphasia as "word salad". Copious, but nonsensical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVhYN7NTIKU

~Dr. Imago

[Piscivore]

Originally Posted by Gate2501

It is one of three things.

1. The subject is deliberately attempting to obfuscate their speech so that it is harder to attack (you can't make a coherent attack against incoherent speech/text, other than to point out that it is in fact, word salad).

2. The subject is attempting to appeal to less educated individuals that will latch onto complex language that they do not fully understand, thinking that the speaker/author is some manner of genius. The readers may also incorrectly interpret the word salad to mean something very grandiose or mysterious, a sort of secret knowledge. This is attractive to many wingnuts.

3. The subject IS the type of person that subject 2 was/is attempting to appeal to. They see deep philosophical meaning in their own word salad, however due to the fact that they are working from their own wacky definitions for the words contained within the salad, no one else can read it without a translation from the author. The problem with that, is that the author is usually a complete moonbat in this case and getting a sensible translation will be much like attempting to teach a pet snake to play fetch.

3.b. Poor English skills and and taking shortcuts based on an unconcious assumption that the reader will already think pretty much the same as they do.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Dr. Imago

Wernicke's aphasia is the most interesting to me. In the Neuro ICU wards taking care of stroke and brain injured patients, I've seen this a fair number of times. They just can't get any cogent, coherent speech out. The most interesting thing is that some of these patients, the less catastrophically injured ones, seem to understand what you are saying and will otherwise follow commands. This is often the result of injury to the frontotemporal cortex on the speech-dominant side of the brain (usually the left) in the distribution area of the middle cerebral artery.

I would best describe some of the speech I've heard from Wernicke's aphasia as "word salad". Copious, but nonsensical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVhYN7NTIKU

~Dr. Imago

Wow, if you watch this one at about 1:15 there starts a train of thought that is what I think of as word salad. But it is small side salad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGnl8dqEoPQ

That gut also is having EPS isit looks like although it could be perseveration with the hair, he is taking haldol, I bet he does better now on an atypical.