Legibility / readability in transcribed oral speech samples. A case study of pragmatic competence in people with trisomy 21

Abstract

The research deals with pragmatic competence in a neurodevelopmental disorder. Specifically, readability/readability in transcribed oral speech samples of people with trisomy 21, also called Down’s syndrome. The Python 3 programming language is used to handle the collected and transcribed data, with a view to analysing and extracting reliable objective results. When working with transcribed samples of oral discourse, secondary orality is of interest. The aim of the research is, on the one hand, to trace the verbal fluency of oral discourse in the transcribed samples analysed and, on the other hand, to map its pragmalinguistic characteristics in the context of the dual role of readability/readability. After the formal analysis of the corpus separately and in aggregate, the results are presented and discussed with regard to the quantitative variables applied to readability and conclusions are drawn with regard to the qualitative factors applied to readability.