The speech chain describes the transmission of information from a speaker to a listener.

The
transmission process involves the activities at five levels: Linguistics level (Speaker Side), Physiological
level (Articulatory), Acoustic level, Physiological level (Auditory) and Linguistic level (Listener’s side).
First, at Linguistics level on the speaker's side, the brain generates thoughts and selects the suitable
word sequence with the grammatical rules. Then, at the Physiological level, by using motor nerves, this
set of commands is sent to the muscles that control the articulators such as the lips, tongue, vocal cord,
etc. As a result, the articulators are placed in the right positions and produce sound waves. The sound
waves are transmitted through the air, which is called “acoustic level”. On the one hand, the sound
waves reach the speaker’s ear, the speaker listens to his own sound and compares it with the sound he
wants to produce and make suitable changes. This is the speech chain’s feedback link. On the other
hand, when sound waves reach the listener’s ear, the speech transmission moves to the physiological
level. At this level, the waves activate the listener’s hearing mechanism and produce nerve impulses that
travel along the acoustic nerve to the listener’s brain. The speech chain will be completed on the
linguistic level (listener’s side) when the listener’s brain perceives and interprets the messages from the
speaker.