Myths and Mysteries of Bilingual Stuttering

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No magic

From: Ed Feuer
Date: 04 Oct 2010
Time: 13:20:32 -0500
Remote Name: 142.161.176.192

Comments

In real-world operation, like they say in car reviews, there is no fluency magic in bilingualism for people who stutter. Apart from some temporary distractor effect for some who speak in another language, all that produces stuttering in L1 will bring stuttering in L2. Having said that there are a few observations I would add: There is certainly more opportunity for substitution when one functions in a bilingual environment — and that is ultimately harmful in trying to effect beneficial change in speech. Also, in real-world operation, perfectly bilingual people are much less common than those of us who are unilingual and a half, one-quarter, three-quarters or whatever fraction, or even uttering phrases from travellers' phrase books. Difficulties in attempting to speak in the "fraction" language are bound to produce communicative stress, always contributory to stuttering. Those of us whose first language is English face another problem. Foreign-language speakers, who likely know more English than we know their language, jump in to guess what even fluent English-speakers struggle to say as soon as they hear their accent — or even sooner. And more so when they hear stuttering. And in both cases they relish the chance to practise their English. Fluent SLPs can test the above via pseudo-stuttering in real-world situations. — edfeuer@mts.net


Last changed: 10/04/10