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From: Liv Marit Dalen
Date: 10/6/02
Time: 4:06:42 PM
Remote Name: 193.217.216.65
An interesting question! Here in the Nordic countries most therapy is concentrated on nonavoidance, not with fluency as a goal.This has been regarded as the most up-to-date thing to do,and Van Riper & Co have been looked upon as somewhat old fashioned. We recently hosted the Nordic Stuttering Conference in Bergen, and I heard from one of the participating speech therapists that here in Norway they have begun thinking about doing more fluency shaping therapy. In some ways I was happy to hear this, because I know that it can give people with a severe stutter a tool to help them feel that they can control a communication situation. I do hope though, that we don't get what we over here refer to as "amerikanske tilstander" (American conditions),where in certain circles the "Fluency God" is worshipped as the one who shall rule forever. I think that the reasons lie in the American society, which is highly competitive and where everyone has to fight for himself and try to become like anybody else. If you are different, you're out. I was, for example, astonished to hear that in the US certain speech therapists make money in "helping" people getting rid of their regional dialect or foreign accent. Here in Norway, a small country with less than 5 mill. inhabitants, we have hundreds of dialects which are freely exposed in the media, in schools, churches and other places where communication is going on. We also have two different written variations of the language. This works fine (although it makes it a little complicated for a foreigner to learn to understand oral Norwegian, just ask my husband!), and I think that it also helps people who have some speech impediment to get on more easily. People are used to hear many different ways of talking, and maybe they get more tolerant because of that?