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From: Ed Feuer
Date: 19 Oct 2009
Time: 12:16:56 -0500
Remote Name: 134.29.31.181
Michelle, You're right to be concerned. It's the other side of the equation, the one that many clinic room-focused SLPs simply choose to ignore -- listener attitudes, in this instance caused by the noxious conversational usages of the terms stuttering and stammering used by ignorant fluent speakers including some in the media to connote lower intelligence, shame, failure or incompetence. Example: "I went for an interview today but I flubbed it because I was stuttering." That person was not doing what a qualified SLP would call stuttering. It's the difference between saying I feel depressed today and clinical depression. The most egregious example in recent years was provided in various forums by Bush-haters who thought that the worst possible invective they could throw at the president was to claim he stuttered or stammered in a speech (Google news: Bush stuttering). What they implied, of course, is lower intelligence, shame, failure or incompetence. But we know that Bush didn't scan ahead for feared words or sounds, he didn't avoid certain words on which he had stuttered in the past, he didn't violate speech mechanics, he didn't have real blocks. Trouble is, for most people, such noxious conversational usages are their only frame of reference about stuttering and stammering given the huge level of public ignorance about the problem. When they meet someone who actually does stutter, they plug into those noxious conversational usages and the resulting unfair social and vocational discrimination should surprise no one. — Ed Feuer, edfeuer@mts.net