Speech Speech Speech is human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of a limited set of perfectly articulated and individualized vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are the same word, e.g., "role" or "hotel"), and using those words in their semantic character as words in the lexicon of a language according to the syntactic constraints that govern lexical words' function in a sentence. In speaking, speakers perform many different intentional speech acts, e.g., informing, declaring, asking, persuading, directing, and
Vocal-Auditory Channel Vocal-Auditory Channel The vocal-auditory channel describes the way vocal signals can be used to produce language. The speaker uses a vocal tract (containing most of the speech organs) to produce speech sounds, and the hearer employs an auditory apparatus (the sense of hearing) to receive and process the speech sounds. This is why human language is said to be based on speech sounds produced by the articulatory system and received through the auditory system. The vocal channel is a particularly excellent means through which speech sounds can be accompanied or substituted by gestures, facial expressions, body movement, and way of