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From: Ed Feuer
Date: 17 Oct 2008
Time: 22:07:41 -0500
Remote Name: 128.171.106.215
That public education problem is even tougher than you describe given the very negative image of stuttering in conversational usage -- and not what qualified SLPs define as stuttering. That conversational usage is like the difference between saying one is feeling depressed today and having clinical depression. In conversational usage stuttering is taken to mean some variant of lower intelligence, shame, failure or competence. Here's a quickly accessible of what I mean. There are people out there who absolutely detest George W. Bush. They want to hit him with what they regard as the most vile insult they can think of and that is saying that he stutters. Just put the words Bush stutter or Bush stuttering in Google and you'll see many, many examples. But Bush doesn't scan ahead for feared words or sounds, he substitute words for others on which he fears he waill block, he has no blocks, he has fried eggs, not glottal fry and he doesn't avoid speaking situations. In short, he does nothing a qualified SLP would call stuttering. But the conversational usage of stuttering has consequences. Given the colossal ignorance about stuttering out there, when members of the public meet someone who really does stuttering, they plug in the definitions of conversational usage -- lower intelligence, shame, failure or incompetence. The resulting unfair social and vocational discrimination against people who stutter should surprise no one. Why do you think it is SLP students so resist assignments to go out in public to do pseudo-stuttering to see what people who stutter are up against? Their sabotage, miminimization and avoidance of the assignment shows that these young people have already been socialized to the notion that stuttering must be something pretty awful. Of course, the denial machines will get revved up because this notion of linkage between conversation usage and consequences is too terrible to contemplate. As I've said elsewhere, those who claim competence to treat stuttering must stop ignoring the other part of the equation. --edfeuer@mts.net