[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Bob Quesal
Date: 06 Oct 2005
Time: 09:08:09 -0500
Remote Name: 143.43.201.240
Hi Shelly: I think many fluent speakers can and do show empathy for people who stutter. I have my students do an exercise where they have to make phone calls and go out in public and speak with varying degrees of disfluency to get a taste of what the person who stutters goes through on a regular basis. However, as I try to point out in my essay, the best way to be empathetic is to realize that if you have never gone through something, you cannot really understand it, and so you have to accept the report of the person who is experiencing it. As far as "stutterer" or "person who stutters" or "person who speaks with disfluencies" or whatever is concerned, I try to use "person who stutters," but occasionally I show my age and slip back into using "stutterer." (It's hard for some students to realize that there was a time when being offended was not a cottage industry.) ;-)> About the only real research that has been done on the topic (that I am aware of) was conducted by Ken St. Louis in the mid-1990s (as I recall) and he found that "stutterer" was not considered to be pejorative. I guess I forgot to include "I apologize in advance to those I may offend" at the beginning of my essay. ;-)> I hope this helps. Bob Q.