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he or she will do bad things based on what the voices instruct him or her to do. Meanwhile, delusions include false beliefs having misinterpretation of the reality.
For example, a schizophrenic person may believe that the government is torturing him or her when he or she is hit in a crowd accidentally. In addition, delusions
give a strong feeling like more anger and more mistrust. On the other hand, disorganized thought patterns deal with the disorganized speech and behaviour.
The sufferer will be incomprehensible in doing conversation and making cohesion between sentence and clause in his or her words.
As stated by Stefan, Travis, and Murray 2002:14, there are three types of psychotic symptoms. They are positive symptoms which consist of delusion
and hallucination, positive thought disorder including disorganization, and negative symptoms involving social withdrawal, apathy, self-neglect, and poverty
of speech. Those symptoms occur when the sufferer has an acute period. It shows that the chronic sufferer of this illness does not regain normal functioning.
Since schizophrenia’s symptoms can vary, some experts divide them into several subcategories. One of those experts is Thompson. Based on Thompson’s
theory 2007:50, there are four categories of schizophrenia. They are: 1
Paranoid Schizophrenia. This illness happens when a sufferer is in his or her psychotic episodes which involve hallucination, delusion, and paranoia. In
this case, the sufferer feels as if he or she is being watched, pursued, and even extremely scared as if other people will harm him or her.
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2 Disorganized Schizophrenia. The sufferer of disorganized schizophrenia has
to face the verbal incoherence. It is difficult for the sufferer to express his or her emotion and mood.
3 Catatonic Schizophrenia. The noticeable symptoms are an extreme
withdrawal, negativity, and self-isolation. 4
Undifferentiated Schizophrenia. Usually, the sufferer of this type of schizophrenia has no motivation, initiative, emotional responsiveness, and
social interest. Those symptoms will influence the language processing in doing
communication. Thus, the schizophrenic will have difficulties in processing his or her language. It is not just caused by the delusional beliefs or the interruption of
thinking caused by auditory hallucinations, but it is also caused by several symptoms like positive and negative symptoms. In the below section, the
researcher discusses about speech abnormalities and behaviours experienced by the schizophrenic.
a. The Speech Abnormalities in Schizophrenic Speech
Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disorder. It may cause the disturbance of speech in a person with this disorder. Abnormalities in
language are central to psychosis, particularly the schizophrenic syndrome. In this case, the researcher uses Liddle’s TLI Thought and Language Index to analyze
the speech impairment of schizophrenia. The TLI is reliable and capable of detecting the speech abnormalities.
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As stated by Liddle 2002:327, TLI is one of the instruments to assess the formal thought disorders. This instrument is based on principles in Wynne
Singer’s concept of communication deviance and in Johnston Holzman’s TDI, but it is much briefer. As the name implies, the TLI is always related to number
or index which has a score scale from 0.25, 0.50, 0.75 to 1.0 depending on severity. Those scales show the occurrence of the phenomena and they are very
useful for a quantitative research. However, this research belongs to a qualitative research focusing on the speech abnormalities in schizophrenia. Thus, the scoring
of each phenomenon is not conducted in this research. In this case, the researcher uses the instrument only to elaborate each phenomenon occurred in schizophrenic
sufferer. Liddle et al. 2002: 326 present eight types of abnormality. Two items
are poverty of speech and weakening of goal reflecting impoverishment of thought and speech. Meanwhile, four items are looseness, peculiar word use,
peculiar sentence construction, and peculiar logic reflecting the disorganisation of thought and language. Those items mentioned are related to the discussion of
schizophrenia since it shows the characteristics of psychotic disorders. Last, the TLI includes two nonspecific abnormalities of the regulation of speech and
thought. They are perseveration and distractibility.
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Components of the Thought and Language Index TLI of Liddle et al. 2002
Impoverishment
Poverty of speech Weakening of goal
Disorganization
Looseness derailment, tangentiality Peculiar word rare or neologised
Peculiar sentence Odd syntax Non-logical reasoning Peculiar Logic
Dysregulation
Perseveration of ideas repetition of ideas
Distractibility by external stimuli
1 Impoverishment of thought or speech
Impoverishment of thought or speech can be divided into two items, i.e. poverty of speech and weakening of goal.
a Poverty of Speech
According to Liddle et al.2002:329, poverty of speech refers to a reduction in the amount of speech. This is in line with the statement from one of
association named Mental Illness Fellowship Victoria 2008:3, people with this condition will give brief and empty responses to questions, lack of elaboration, get
decreased in the ability to communicate, have diminished fluency of speech, and it seems that they have a weakening of thoughts. Thus, there is a possibility that a
schizophrenic’s speech may be draining. Pridmore 2013:13 states that when a schizophrenic has to take an
interview session, then the interviewer should keep prompting, asking for
