King George VI had a speech impediment so he needed help
King George VI (First name Albert Frederick Arthur George)
14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952
He developed a stammer at the age of 7 and felt inferior to his older brother who later became
King Edward VIII
Speech therapy: the play Pygmalion is the story of
speech therapist Henry Higgins who successfully transforms Liza
Doolittle into a darling of high society
One main focus of speech therapy at the time was
accent reduction
accent reduction - As the global marketplace expands a new branch of
English learning related to ESL has become very intriguing. This field is often
called Accent Neutralization or Accent Reduction. The main purpose of accent
neutralization / reduction is to help proficient English speakers speak with a
more North American or British accent. The main cause of this trend towards
accent neutralization / reduction is the demand created by outsourcing.
Experimental phonetics or speech science. The first text to carry the title Experimental Phonetics
was written by K. Rousselet in 1910. Even though research was quite limited some individuals
were offering theories to explain certain speech phonemena. In 1830 W. Willis formulated what
may have been the first scientific theory of vowel production. Several mechanical pieces of
equipment were developed specifically for the study of the physical aspects of speech. Most of
the equipment made use of the pneumatic-mechanical principle which utilized levers, capsules
and rubber tubes. This state existed until the principles of electricity were applied to the
equipment.
Several other mechanical aids were being used during this period, including a tongue
bridle or retractor, wooden plates shaped to the lower jaw, and the glossonochon tongue lever,
which was a thin plate fastened to a lower tooth. H. von Helmholtz developed the resonators that
carry his name to analyze tones (1913).
Higgins, Logue, and 'The King's Speech'
A current film adds another language coach to the pantheon
of cultural heroes – and this one actually lived.
By Ruth Walker / January 14, 2011
Move over, Henry Higgins. Here comes Lionel Logue.
You could free-associate for some time before the terms "speech therapist" and "hero" popped up together. But
Geoffrey Rush's performance in "The King's Speech" as Lionel Logue, the Australian who saved Britain's George
VI from his stammer, gives the English-speaking world another hero alongside Professor Higgins. And Logue was a
real person.
You might call "The King's Speech" an anti-Pygmalion story. Higgins was the phonetician whom George Bernard
Shaw invented as the hero of his play "Pygmalion," based on a Greek myth about a sculptor who falls in love with
his creation. In Shaw's play, adapted as the well-known musical "My Fair Lady," Higgins teaches a flower girl to
speak like a lady so that he can win a bet. He puts a veneer on her and makes her what she was not.
In "The King's Speech," on the other hand, Logue gets "Bertie" to be what he has been all along. He helps him find
his voice to become George VI. Both stories are strong statements of the power of spoken language to convey
identity and authority.
The title of the film is a subtle bit of wordplay. The king has to master his stammer. He has to fix his speech – his
capacity for speaking – before he can successfully give his speeches.
The film opens with an unbearable scene in which Bertie is unable to deliver a speech to close the British Empire
Exhibition in London in 1925. The film concludes a decade and a half and two kings later, when Bertie, now George
VI after the death of his father and the abdication of his older brother, takes to the airwaves to address his people on
the outbreak of World War II.
The story invites comparison with President Roosevelt's mastery of radio for the "fireside chats" that led the
American people through the Great Depression and World War II. The patrician president had a knack for seeming
to make his way into every American's living room. And intimacy is often seen today as the hallmark of radio as a
medium.
"The King's Speech" gives the sense, though, of radio broadcasts as public events, even global events, in real time.
The scenes of the vast BBC control rooms in the film remind us of the even vaster spread of the British Empire. I've
read that people actually used to get dressed up to go sit before the set in the living room. This film makes me
believe that.
And yet – the film is also about the power of intimacy. The king's constricted speech is traced to his constricted
upbringing. A left-hander forced to write with his right hand, young Albert was also forced to wear metal braces to
correct "knock knees." He endured stomach trouble as a boy and ridicule from his older brother, even as a grown
man. When Logue asks whom in his family he was close to growing up, the prince responds without irony,
"Nannies."
Logue may have been the first "ordinary Englishman" the prince had ever met – never mind that Logue was a
transplanted Australian. "Superhuman sympathy" was a key ingredient of Logue's unconventional therapeutic
approach. Arguably he was the king's first and only real "friend," and the man to whom he spoke his speeches.
The fictional Higgins turned a fictional flower girl into an even more fictional princess. The real Logue helped turn a
real prince into a real king.