Which term would describe speech that follows sound rather than meaning?

Which term would describe speech that follows sound rather than meaning?

• A. Derailment
• B. Clanging
• C. Incoherence
• D. Flight of ideas

Answer: (B)

Think in terms of how thoughts are linked in speech. Clanging is when the choice of words is driven by their sound rather than by meaning—rhymes, similar starting sounds, or rhythm guide what the person says, even if the content doesn’t make sense. You might hear phrases that emphasize phonetics over sense, like strings of words that rhyme or alliterate rather than convey a coherent idea. This stands in contrast to derailment, where topics drift with loose connections; incoherence, where speech becomes so disorganized that it's hard to understand; and flight of ideas, where ideas race rapidly but stay on a loosely related track. So the term for speech guided by sound rather than meaning is clanging.

Think in terms of how thoughts are linked in speech. Clanging is when the choice of words is driven by their sound rather than by meaning—rhymes, similar starting sounds, or rhythm guide what the person says, even if the content doesn’t make sense. You might hear phrases that emphasize phonetics over sense, like strings of words that rhyme or alliterate rather than convey a coherent idea. This stands in contrast to derailment, where topics drift with loose connections; incoherence, where speech becomes so disorganized that it's hard to understand; and flight of ideas, where ideas race rapidly but stay on a loosely related track. So the term for speech guided by sound rather than meaning is clanging.