From: Ken Melnick
Date: 09 Oct 2012
Time: 20:58:18 -0500
Remote Name: 75.130.106.150
For years, I've been teaching students a definition of stuttering based on what is observable, based on speech and language features, and does not mention cause (i.e., Wingate). However, as a person who stutters, I've always been keenly aware of the 'under the surface' features - and thus always felt like I needed to add a 'but' after I gave my students a 'good' definition (i.e., Ambrose & Yairi). While I certainly applaud all of your efforts to try and marry the surface with the below the surface, I wonder if we need more than one definition. That is, one of the reasons we have so many theories of stuttering is because stuttering is very different between young children and adults. Likewise, why not have more than one defition to refect these (and other) differences? I wonder if this might help the majority - that is, people who don't stutter to help understand what stuttering is like.