Lord Melvyn Bragg is a radio and television broadcaster and presenter who currently hosts the
BBC Radio 4 discussion show 'In Our Time'. During this show he is required to question guests
and keep conversations on topic. His speech can sound very fast and irregular with many errors
and reformulations, which perceptually could be considered as cluttering. This study aimed to
determine the extent to which Melvyn Bragg could be considered to clutter.
Twelve mp3 podcasts of the radio broadcasts, available from the BBC Radio 4 website, were
used for analysis. The sound files were edited and annotated in PRAAT. They were analysed for
repair type and frequency (repetitions, deletions, substitutions, insertions and other), pause type
and frequency (silent pauses, filled pauses, breath pauses, prolongations and other) and an
orthographic transcription was produced. Articulation rate was also calculated. These results
were compared to the results from 64 typical speakers in the Human Communication Research
Centre Map Task Corpus (HCRC MTC) (Anderson et al., 1991).The Cluttering Severity
Instrument (CSI) was used on one sample to determine the severity of any clutter-like
behaviours.
The results found that Melvyn Bragg used an articulation rate that fell within normal limits set
by the HCRC MTC data. The only disfluency type that was significantly more frequent in
Melvyn Bragg's speech than in the HCRC MTC data was repetitions. The results for all other
repair and pause types were within the normal limits, as set by the HCRC MTC data. The results
of the CSI showed that Melvyn Bragg presents with a similar language profile to 3 known
people who clutter, however he has a much lower severity rating than them. Overall the results
suggest that Melvyn Bragg cannot be considered as a person who clutters.
Whilst the results of this study ought to be viewed with caution due to the small volume of data,
they provide clinical implications and reinforcement of the need for further research and
development of a definition of cluttering, and a provision of normative and standardised data for
diagnosis of cluttering.bsc_Speunpub1686_ethesesunpu
