I am a stutterer. My childhood was a continuous stream of embarrassment. I had dozens of habits for avoiding it; certain problem-words I would seek to not use, the addition of little tics to syncopate my speech and let me get words out.
I attribute my malady to having at some time been forced to become right-handed; a basketball coach in my high school told me with absolute certainty that I was left-handed, not right-handed as I thought I was. That made sense. Both cerebral hemispheres try to speak at once, causing what in a computer would be buss contention. Get me on a topic that excites me and it's guaranteed I will stutter. I have read that forced changes in handedness underlie most cases of stuttering and I am completely convinced of this. I can feel it.
After tendon surgery on my right arm I had a brace across my palm and I tried chopsticks in my left hand, in five minutes I was using them effortlessly. When I write with my left hand, I have to hold it up to a mirror to read it; it's backwards.
The one time, aside from singing, when I never stutter, ever, is speaking before an audience. I have never stuttered once in my life in that circumstance. I eulogized my father in January 2009, delivering a speech I was still writing even as I was delivering it, a speech I had not even thought about what I was going to say until it was my turn to speak, and I never stuttered once.
One of my favourite priests, Fr Jack who was a dear friend of my family had a stutter. As a young man he was nearly incomprehensible, so much so that the Missionary Order he joined gently told him they could not ordain him, but they could accept him as a brother. The superior paired him up on a farm the order owned with another older brother who was nearly deaf. So then brother Jack spent 2 years working the dairy with this other brother, shouting at him from dawn till dusk (and turning the that diary into highly sought after breeding stud in the process). His speech improved dramatically as a result and his superior was able to ordain him and sent him out as parish priest to some of the most remote parts of Australia. He carried a unique lilt and had a little trouble starting sentences. It all seemed to fall away whenever he said Mass though. He died about 4 years ago from stomach cancer in Sydney after his last assignment in Broken Hill.
Another dearly loved Christian Brother we got to know also had a rather obvious stutter, one he inherited from his father and shared with one of his brothers. He had us all in stitches laughing as he retold some of the family dinner conversation with three stutters. He usually ended all the stories with “and that’s how we made our mother a saint!”
It’s amazing to me how little we understand about why some people stutter and others don’t. And just how gloriously complex human language capacity is.
Jul 20, 2023·edited Jul 20, 2023Liked by Frederick R Prete
I've got a roommate with a mild speech impediment. He often restarts sentences, like a psychological sort of stutter, as if he's iterating on his thought in real-time, searching for the right turn of phrase. One of my favorite uncles has a pronounced stutter, as did several of my close friends in high school, and I've had healthy relationships with all of them.
However, at the risk of sounding callous, I'd like to suggest that, when it comes to communication, it shouldn't be all give on the part of the fluent.
You wrote: "Those who stutter neither ask for, nor expect special compensatory accommodations from the rest of the world [...] In short, people who stutter want us to listen to them actively and attentively — no matter how much time they take to express themselves"
As you've mentioned, stuttering is a complex neurological process that we don't fully understand. It's a fact of life, especially for the stutterer, and you're not doing them any favors by pretending their articulation isn't especially taxing on listeners. The above quote seems to swallow its own tail attempting to wish away this unpleasant reality.
The problematic assumption seems to be that we'd all be perfectly patient listeners in a normal conversation, which is absolutely NOT the case. Whether or not we should be is debatable. My point is that those of us who are fluent are held accountable for our various styles of communication. If you are long-winded, oblivious to conversational tempo, or - for whatever reason - consistently speak at an inappropriate volume, you'd be lucky if well-intentioned criticism was the harshest form of social feedback you got about it. This is a healthy mechanism that often misfires, resulting in people feeling bullied or - at the other end - bullies feeling justified in their mistreatment.
There should be a feedback loop for anybody who struggles with communication (for whatever reason) that results in them improving their skills, and anybody with a speech impediment really needs to account for the reality of their situation. It's just not as easy to listen to somebody tell you about their rhododendrons when it takes them twenty times longer than their neighbor, AGAIN - REGARDLESS OF THE REASON.
I couldn't agree more that we should extend patience and respect to those individuals with fluency issues, but we don't achieve that by pretending it's no effort at all to extend the patience. The reality facing the dysfluent is that they've been saddled with an unfair burden, and that the onus is on them as much as the fluent to work within the boundaries of reasonably afforded patience.
It's good and healthy to acknowledge that conversational flippancy is much costlier for dysfluent individuals, because articulating an errant thought might take five seconds for a fluent person but five minutes for them. It's entirely possible to be disrespectful and inconsiderate (as a dysfluent individual) if you're not aware of this, especially if you're told repeatedly that you should have special protections against being interrupted while you're trying to verbalize a thought.
I feel like, probably, you don't disagree with any of this. I'm struggling with my reaction to this article because it's a bit sentimental, which is fine except that it seemingly ignores the reality of the daily struggles I've encountered? Like, we can't just pretend dysfluency doesn't affect listeners. It's like pretending that the weight of a morbidly obese individual has no effect on certain carnival rides or medical equipment.
Consider this an invitation to level with me, or call me down if what I've shared seems totally out of line. There seems to be a call to 'treat them like anybody else' written into this, which is what I think is niggling at me, because, when anybody else trips over their words, reminding them to "Relax," "Slow down," and "Breathe" is just considerate. This makes it feel like what you're suggesting is that dysfluent individuals should expect special treatment, and that we should give it to them while pretending we're not, which I can't imagine is what you meant?
Very interesting post. Thank you. I also enjoyed the film, "The King's Speech", about George VI. Strangely, as a (now long-retired) university teacher, I don't remember ever encountering stuttering, despite putting a great emphasis on student spoken contributions - presentations and speaking in class. I did get a lot of satisfaction from responding to the challenges of other conditions such as dyslexia and autism spectrum disorders. (I do wonder whether the methods required of the teacher to deal with these outliers, and other, more physical deficits, are actually only best practice, and all the students benefit. I don't know.) Either (a) students with a stutter had already been screened out (I was also an admissions tutor, and would be surprised if our admissions process were at fault), (b) I was too unobservant to notice them, (c) my approach to teaching allowed them to prosper without me needing to notice them, or (d) possibly the figures suggested in your post might exaggerate.
I am a stutterer. My childhood was a continuous stream of embarrassment. I had dozens of habits for avoiding it; certain problem-words I would seek to not use, the addition of little tics to syncopate my speech and let me get words out.
I attribute my malady to having at some time been forced to become right-handed; a basketball coach in my high school told me with absolute certainty that I was left-handed, not right-handed as I thought I was. That made sense. Both cerebral hemispheres try to speak at once, causing what in a computer would be buss contention. Get me on a topic that excites me and it's guaranteed I will stutter. I have read that forced changes in handedness underlie most cases of stuttering and I am completely convinced of this. I can feel it.
After tendon surgery on my right arm I had a brace across my palm and I tried chopsticks in my left hand, in five minutes I was using them effortlessly. When I write with my left hand, I have to hold it up to a mirror to read it; it's backwards.
The one time, aside from singing, when I never stutter, ever, is speaking before an audience. I have never stuttered once in my life in that circumstance. I eulogized my father in January 2009, delivering a speech I was still writing even as I was delivering it, a speech I had not even thought about what I was going to say until it was my turn to speak, and I never stuttered once.
Thank you for this article.
One of my favourite priests, Fr Jack who was a dear friend of my family had a stutter. As a young man he was nearly incomprehensible, so much so that the Missionary Order he joined gently told him they could not ordain him, but they could accept him as a brother. The superior paired him up on a farm the order owned with another older brother who was nearly deaf. So then brother Jack spent 2 years working the dairy with this other brother, shouting at him from dawn till dusk (and turning the that diary into highly sought after breeding stud in the process). His speech improved dramatically as a result and his superior was able to ordain him and sent him out as parish priest to some of the most remote parts of Australia. He carried a unique lilt and had a little trouble starting sentences. It all seemed to fall away whenever he said Mass though. He died about 4 years ago from stomach cancer in Sydney after his last assignment in Broken Hill.
Another dearly loved Christian Brother we got to know also had a rather obvious stutter, one he inherited from his father and shared with one of his brothers. He had us all in stitches laughing as he retold some of the family dinner conversation with three stutters. He usually ended all the stories with “and that’s how we made our mother a saint!”
It’s amazing to me how little we understand about why some people stutter and others don’t. And just how gloriously complex human language capacity is.
I've got a roommate with a mild speech impediment. He often restarts sentences, like a psychological sort of stutter, as if he's iterating on his thought in real-time, searching for the right turn of phrase. One of my favorite uncles has a pronounced stutter, as did several of my close friends in high school, and I've had healthy relationships with all of them.
However, at the risk of sounding callous, I'd like to suggest that, when it comes to communication, it shouldn't be all give on the part of the fluent.
You wrote: "Those who stutter neither ask for, nor expect special compensatory accommodations from the rest of the world [...] In short, people who stutter want us to listen to them actively and attentively — no matter how much time they take to express themselves"
As you've mentioned, stuttering is a complex neurological process that we don't fully understand. It's a fact of life, especially for the stutterer, and you're not doing them any favors by pretending their articulation isn't especially taxing on listeners. The above quote seems to swallow its own tail attempting to wish away this unpleasant reality.
The problematic assumption seems to be that we'd all be perfectly patient listeners in a normal conversation, which is absolutely NOT the case. Whether or not we should be is debatable. My point is that those of us who are fluent are held accountable for our various styles of communication. If you are long-winded, oblivious to conversational tempo, or - for whatever reason - consistently speak at an inappropriate volume, you'd be lucky if well-intentioned criticism was the harshest form of social feedback you got about it. This is a healthy mechanism that often misfires, resulting in people feeling bullied or - at the other end - bullies feeling justified in their mistreatment.
There should be a feedback loop for anybody who struggles with communication (for whatever reason) that results in them improving their skills, and anybody with a speech impediment really needs to account for the reality of their situation. It's just not as easy to listen to somebody tell you about their rhododendrons when it takes them twenty times longer than their neighbor, AGAIN - REGARDLESS OF THE REASON.
I couldn't agree more that we should extend patience and respect to those individuals with fluency issues, but we don't achieve that by pretending it's no effort at all to extend the patience. The reality facing the dysfluent is that they've been saddled with an unfair burden, and that the onus is on them as much as the fluent to work within the boundaries of reasonably afforded patience.
It's good and healthy to acknowledge that conversational flippancy is much costlier for dysfluent individuals, because articulating an errant thought might take five seconds for a fluent person but five minutes for them. It's entirely possible to be disrespectful and inconsiderate (as a dysfluent individual) if you're not aware of this, especially if you're told repeatedly that you should have special protections against being interrupted while you're trying to verbalize a thought.
I feel like, probably, you don't disagree with any of this. I'm struggling with my reaction to this article because it's a bit sentimental, which is fine except that it seemingly ignores the reality of the daily struggles I've encountered? Like, we can't just pretend dysfluency doesn't affect listeners. It's like pretending that the weight of a morbidly obese individual has no effect on certain carnival rides or medical equipment.
Consider this an invitation to level with me, or call me down if what I've shared seems totally out of line. There seems to be a call to 'treat them like anybody else' written into this, which is what I think is niggling at me, because, when anybody else trips over their words, reminding them to "Relax," "Slow down," and "Breathe" is just considerate. This makes it feel like what you're suggesting is that dysfluent individuals should expect special treatment, and that we should give it to them while pretending we're not, which I can't imagine is what you meant?
Has there been any work on stuttering biotype definitions? Is there a pattern in stuttering prevalence when stratified by demographic groups?
The movie, The King’s Speech…..
Very interesting post. Thank you. I also enjoyed the film, "The King's Speech", about George VI. Strangely, as a (now long-retired) university teacher, I don't remember ever encountering stuttering, despite putting a great emphasis on student spoken contributions - presentations and speaking in class. I did get a lot of satisfaction from responding to the challenges of other conditions such as dyslexia and autism spectrum disorders. (I do wonder whether the methods required of the teacher to deal with these outliers, and other, more physical deficits, are actually only best practice, and all the students benefit. I don't know.) Either (a) students with a stutter had already been screened out (I was also an admissions tutor, and would be surprised if our admissions process were at fault), (b) I was too unobservant to notice them, (c) my approach to teaching allowed them to prosper without me needing to notice them, or (d) possibly the figures suggested in your post might exaggerate.