This article presents a qualitative, interpretivist research study that documents the emergence, in the context of typed expression, of increasingly useful and reliable speech for a young person labeled with autism. The authors construct a descriptive narrative of the process of this young man's emergent speech development and organize the data around four components of this complex, dynamic, and nonlinear process: (a) echolalia or "unreliable" speech, (b) reading out loud, (c) using reliable speech, and (d) integrating speaking and typing. Additionally, the authors identify three categories of supports that this young man and his family experienced and interpreted as being supportive of his emergent speech. These categories include (a) the importance of taking risks, (b) the importance of seeing and hearing words together, and (c) the importance of an inclusive academic education including rich literacy experiences. Throughout, this inductive analysis constructs an understanding of how this young man and his family have experienced and interpreted his emergence as a reliable speaker.DESCRIPTORS: qualitative research, interpretivist research, autism, speech development, language development, facilitated communication Jamie Burke is 13 years old, and he is labeled with autism. Throughout his life, his speech has not been terribly useful to him. As recently as a year ago, Jamie was considered to be functionally nonverbal-what little speech he had was sporadic and consisted largely of echoed words and phrases. People around him could not be certain if his words reflected what he thought or intended to say at any given time. It was not uncommon to hear Jamie repeat short phrases over and over again, including titles or lines from favorite books, songs, or films, such as "The Magic Tollbooth," "Everywhere I Go," or "Flash Gordon." Jamie's limited speech did not allow him to verbally answer a direct question, to ask a friend how the weekend was, or to offer comments during a class discussion. To express himself in these kinds of situations, Jamie has relied for the past 8 years on facilitated communication (FC), a method of supported typing, as his primary means ).However, over the past year, Jamie Burke has emerged as a reliable speaker, 1 someone for whom speech has become an increasingly useful form of expression. When we began this research, we could not have anticipated how quickly and almost explosively Jamie's speech would emerge. Virtually every time we saw Jamie over the course of the research, he used his expanding speech in novel ways. How might we describe the emergence of Jamie's increasingly reliable speech? What did Jamie experience as supportive of his emerging speech? And how have Jamie and his family Address all correspondence and requests for reprints to Alicia A. Broderick,