Talk about echolalia and scripting. Do you use echolalia? What about scripting?
Echolalia is defined as the meaningless repetition of another person's spoken words. I don't really agree with this. Just because echolalia is a different way to communicate does not mean it's wrong or meaningless. Scripting is a form of echolalia.
I don’t do much verbal echolalia. At least not in conversation, I do seem to have a lot of echolalial stims. I’ve mentioned my ‘Nicky Nicky Nicky’ that I used to do as well as ‘Bah bah bah bah bologna.’ The majority of my echolalia seems to be sort of mental repetition. I’ll say or hear something and end up repeating it in my head for ages and ages. And it usually has a progression to it. Something like ‘I went to the store’ will eventually become either just ‘store store store’ or me spelling it out over and over. Sometimes I do catch myself saying it out loud but usually it’s just in my head.
A lot of my verbal communication is scripting. I do have a semi-functional collection of phrases to get me though the most common social scenarios. My mother has commented that I don’t have a conversation so much as make statements, which makes sense if I’m scripting a lot. The downside of scripting is that its only really useful for basic small talk and very common interactions. Anything more intensive than asking and responding about the weather or how I am today actually requires a thought-out response, which is unfortunate and can make me seem somewhat laggy. I’m sure my interactions get boring as well if I’m always saying the same responses. I do try to kind of alternate my phrases every once in a while so conversations with me aren’t quite so monotonous but I’m not sure how well I actually accomplish that.
My language is already odd, it’s stiff and more formal and my terminology is a bit different from the typical person my age. As I’ve mentioned before Britain is a special interest of mine and I’ve picked up a bunch of British terminology which has worked its way into my scripts. I’m sure this comes across as even more odd as the typical American doesn’t go around saying things like ‘this needs to be put in the post,’ or ‘mind the lorry’ or ‘I have chocolate digestive biscuits.’ I should probably make it more of a priority to learn some new and more common scripts but as I can usually communicate okay it’s not something I’m too chuffed about.
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