9.9 Clutterer or not?
Well-articulated speech and mastery of language usually take years to develop. They result from observing exemplary speakers, much practice and self-correction, qualities that not everybody is equally endowed with. In various habits of speech that people display, what do we consider normal, what abnormal? Are there certain qualifications, lacking which speech is called deviant?
The demarcation line is fuzzy at best. One speaker disobeys rules of syntax or articulation because he is tired, another because he is negligent. Another, and that would be a clutterer, does not comply with the rules because he has an insufficient grasp of them, or cannot properly focus his attention on the act of speaking, or lacks coordination of his effector organs. It seems reasonable to state that imperfections in speech and the use of language are acceptable as long as they are transient phenomena that occur only in exceptional circumstances. The same imperfections are diagnosed as abnormal if occurring regularly and under most conditions (Map 9.9.1).