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This article is a single-case investigation of phonological naming therapy. The individual involved had fluent jargon speech, with neologisms, verbal paraphasias, and paragrammatisms. The jargon was underpinned by a severe anomia. Content words were rarely accessed either in spontaneous speech or naming. Single word investigations highlighted some preserved skills. Auditory comprehension, at least for concrete words, was relatively intact and although nonwords could not be repeated, words could, and at a level which was far superior to naming. The patient also had some ability to respond to phonological cues. These results suggested that phonological representations were preserved and that there were some intact semantic abilities. It seemed that the naming disorder was primarily due to an inability to access phonology from semantics. Therapy took a phonological approach. The patient was encouraged to reflect upon the syllabic structure and first phoneme of pictured targets. Subsequently, she was required to use this partial phonological knowledge as a self-cue. It was hypothesized that this therapy might equip the subject with a self-cuing naming strategy. Posttherapy investigations of naming demonstrated dramatic improvements, which generalized to untreated items. However, there was little evidence that these were due to a self cuing strategy. Performance on phonological judgment and discrimination assessments, which required conscious phonological reflection, was unchanged, and there were no signs that the patient was self-cuing during naming. Reasons for these paradoxical results are discussed. (JINS, 1998, 4, 675–686.)

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People with jargon aphasia have severely disordered and incomprehensible speech that may be resistant to therapeutic intervention. In this study, we treated written output and examined whether it assisted communication for these clients. In stage one of the study, anagram sorting, delayed copying and lexical decision tasks were used to investigate the residual knowledge of written words in a group of ten people with jargon aphasia. Evidence of the presence of orthographic knowledge was taken as an indication that writing might be a useful focus for therapy. This hypothesis was explored in stage two with six clients. A personally useful vocabulary was selected for each, and copying, word completion and written picture-naming tasks were used in therapy to improve written production of these words. The clients made progress in written naming. However, they showed little change on a 'message' assessment that tested their ability to use the written words to convey messages. Stage three targeted communicative writing. Here, three of the clients received 'message therapy', which encouraged them to relate treated words to functional messages and to communicate them to a partner. The clients improved on the message assessment and observation of their communication and reports from relatives suggested that they made functional use of writing in a range of communication settings.