Experiencing Shaped Flow

Module Three , Experiencing Shaped Flow , is about experiencing the type of flow from the lungs that is shaped and not obstructed. This is the Knight-Thompson Speechwork approach to describing the component parts of a vowel: shaped flow. This module brings the reader through a series of exercises to explore shaped flow beyond the familiar definitions and gestures of what a “vowel” is for any given speaker. This work, called “phthonging,” describes vowels, or the more expansive KTS Term of Art, phthong, as having a tongue shape, a lip shape, and perhaps a velum shape as well. Readers decouple these elements of phthongs so they may gain more expressive territory for their phthongs, and later for vowels in various speech or accent contexts.