An Online Initiative to Bring Self-Help to Turkish Speaking Stutterers

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Re: Self-Help to Turkish Speaking Stutterers

From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 03 Oct 2008
Time: 17:35:56 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.121

Comments

Dear Pam, Thanks for your comment. As it happens I am in a unique position to answer your question. The problem is, "How can I do so briefly?" Oh well, let me try. If you will go to <http://www.asha.org/about/publications/leader-online/archives/2005/051018/051018d.htm>, you'll access an article I wrote in 2005 about an initiative called the International Project on Attitudes Toward Human Attributes (IPATHA) that I coordinate. We have been developing an instrument to measure public opinion toward stuttering worldwide. As it happens, we have lots of information from Turkey in our pilot studies. To oversimplify the results, I can tell you that people wherever we have used the experimental survey respond more similarly than differently. And we've tried it out in 5 continents, 12 countries, and 8 different languages. In other words, people's attitudes toward those who stutter--and stuttering as a disorder--are surprisingly similar around the world. But there are some interesting differences. In Turkey, for example, it appears that the person on the street is more opinionated about stuttering than some people here in the USA, and more likely to offer advice that may or may not be helpful, like "slow down" or "relax." They also indicate they would be more likely to make a joke about stuttering than people in this country. On the other hand, they appear to be bothered less by stuttering in others, consider it less of a handicap in some ways, and generally appear to be less "uptight" about stuttering. So, I would interpret these results that Turkey may be a different--but not worse--environment to live with a stutter than a place where people don't talk about it and use political correctness (e.g., PWS) when they do. I'm not sure about this yet, but I suspect we'll find dimensions within any society, e.g., the propensity to engage those with handicaps, that may differ. Anyway, thanks for the question. Ken


Last changed: 10/03/08