Rethinking covert stuttering (Constantino, Manning, Nordstrom, 2017)
- How do people who pass as fluent constitute themselves?
- Expected a straightforward study of ableism and repression.
- Got stories of resistance and agency.
- Participants did not see why stuttering was any more authentic than fluency.
- Passing is not repressed stuttering but a unique form of stuttering constituted by specific practices of self.
- Passing resists both how biology suggests a stutterer must talk and what privileges society says stutterers should have access to.
More information
- Constantino CD, Manning WH, Nordstrom SN. Rethinking covert stuttering. J Fluency Disord. 2017 Sep;53:26-40. doi: 10.1016/j.jfludis.2017.06.001. Epub 2017 Jun 19. PMID: 28870332.
Related files
In our zeal to resist medical conceptions of stuttering do we just substitute one normalizing litmus test for another?
By rejecting fluency in and of itself or by asking whether forms of knowledge are consistent with our favorite model of disability, what ways of being do we disqualify?
I’m not comfortable telling another stutterer how to think/feel about their stuttering.
Stutterers are always already resisting how they are constituted.
How are they currently resisting societal demands for fluency?
How are they currently resisting their body’s demands for effortful speech?
Rather than see therapy as a means to liberate the self (be it fluent or stuttered) I suggest we see it as an exploration of the stutterer’s resistance and agency.
We explore how the stutterer has been constituted not to determine who they must be but to determine who they do not have to be.
We explore how they got here but leave where they’re going up to them.
In my clinical experience, most stutterers value both an increase in their ability to resist societal pressures to speak fluently and an increase in fluency, or at least easier stuttering.
In our zeal to resist medical conceptions of stuttering do we just substitute one normalizing litmus test for another?
By rejecting fluency in and of itself or by asking whether forms of knowledge are consistent with our favorite model of disability, what ways of being do we disqualify?
I’m not comfortable telling another stutterer how to think/feel about their stuttering.
Stutterers are always already resisting how they are constituted.
How are they currently resisting societal demands for fluency?
How are they currently resisting their body’s demands for effortful speech?
Rather than see therapy as a means to liberate the self (be it fluent or stuttered) I suggest we see it as an exploration of the stutterer’s resistance and agency.
We explore how the stutterer has been constituted not to determine who they must be but to determine who they do not have to be.
We explore how they got here but leave where they’re going up to them.
In my clinical experience, most stutterers value both an increase in their ability to resist societal pressures to speak fluently and an increase in fluency, or at least easier stuttering.
- Fluent ↔︎ Stuttered
- Medical models ↔︎ Social models
- Speech restructuring therapies ↔︎ Neurodiversity
<hr>
Authentic self as fluent
Authentic self is repressed by bodily power (pathology). We can liberate the self by restoring normal functioning.
- Behavioral therapy.
- Medication.
- Surgery.
<hr>
Authentic self as stuttered
Authentic self is repressed by social power (ableism). We can liberate the self by rejecting fluency.
- Stuttering pride.
- Activism.
- Creative expression.
- Identity is always relative.
<hr>
Identity is always relative
There is no true self to be emancipated, there is only different selves constituted through power relations.
I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
— Lorde (1984)
<hr>
A rejection of authenticity does not necessarily lead to determinism.
We are free in so far as we continuously rebelling against the ways in which we are already defined, categorized, and classified.
- Fluent ↔︎ Stuttered
- Medical models ↔︎ Social models
- Speech restructuring therapies ↔︎ Neurodiversity
<hr>
Authentic self as fluent
Authentic self is repressed by bodily power (pathology). We can liberate the self by restoring normal functioning.
- Behavioral therapy.
- Medication.
- Surgery.
<hr>
Authentic self as stuttered
Authentic self is repressed by social power (ableism). We can liberate the self by rejecting fluency.
- Stuttering pride.
- Activism.
- Creative expression.
- Identity is always relative.
<hr>
Identity is always relative
There is no true self to be emancipated, there is only different selves constituted through power relations.
I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
— Lorde (1984)
<hr>
A rejection of authenticity does not necessarily lead to determinism.
We are free in so far as we continuously rebelling against the ways in which we are already defined, categorized, and classified.
To suggest that the stutterer is simply repressed by power (be it societal or bodily) is to deny his agency, his ability to resist power.
To suggest that the stutterer is simply repressed by power (be it societal or bodily) is to deny his agency, his ability to resist power.
It is a common feeling for stutterers to feel out of control, veering beyond intentions and other guardrails. Also common feeling for stutterers to be a scapegoat for the structural sins of communication.In the mode of transmission, Lisbeth Lipardi writes “the accuracy of the message, the efficiency of delivery, and the precision of reception are in the foreground…” (p. 10). Greater control over these variables is meant to quicken the incident-free relay of messages in the pursuit of greater instrumental power.
- Lipardi, L. (2014). Listening, thinking, being: Toward an ethics of attunement. PennState University Press.
- The blurt. Stutterers pepper their language with so-called “fillers” that ostensibly sit outside of, and even detract from, the message. We sometimes grimace and groan in the act of speech. In addition, we sometimes find ourselves in the midst of speaking sounds, words, or phrases we didn’t fully intend.
- The misfire. The phenomenon of stuttering includes both prolongation and repetition. Stuttering can extend the opening sounds of a message (e.g. ---aaaaaaaagree or bo-bo-bo-book), which an ableist grammar recodes as misfires that communicative parties can tacitly agree to ignore.
- The stall. A repetition can be a redundant redundancy (one that serves no discernable purpose), like repeating most of a sentence multiple times to get a “running start” on the difficult finish that was long ago anticipated by our impatient interlocutor. Or, in a hard block, the voice suddenly and unexpectedly runs dry. A word stops in your throat, and you must wait for infra-bodily traffic to clear while the absence of meaning gapes wide and dangerous in the social world.
- Crossed wires. A regular experience for stutterers, crossed wires describes the state of “talking past each other” that might begin when one party “mishears” the other and then feedbacks error into the conversation.
- The swerve. Clinicians prefer the term “avoidance” to describe the strategy stutterers employ when we sense an oncoming phoneme over which we expect to trip. I might, for example, begin to say “I agree” but change course, swerving around a potential misfire to substitute on the fly: “I don’t know.”
- The cut-off. This accident is one of attempted repair, caused when interlocutors or bystanders rush to the scene of an accident, interrupt, and reimpose order by attempting to predict and finish the stalled (or otherwise damaged) message according to a dominant grammar.
- The gridlock. Stuttering ferociously at the front of a queue, for example, halts the flow of information, people, and capital; it stalls a lane of traffic and tempts impatient honks in the form of tapped toes and glances, as everyone waits for an undetermined time until information and thus bodies will once again flow free.
- The blurt. Stutterers pepper their language with so-called “fillers” that ostensibly sit outside of, and even detract from, the message. We sometimes grimace and groan in the act of speech. In addition, we sometimes find ourselves in the midst of speaking sounds, words, or phrases we didn’t fully intend.
- The misfire. The phenomenon of stuttering includes both prolongation and repetition. Stuttering can extend the opening sounds of a message (e.g. ---aaaaaaaagree or bo-bo-bo-book), which an ableist grammar recodes as misfires that communicative parties can tacitly agree to ignore.
- The stall. A repetition can be a redundant redundancy (one that serves no discernable purpose), like repeating most of a sentence multiple times to get a “running start” on the difficult finish that was long ago anticipated by our impatient interlocutor. Or, in a hard block, the voice suddenly and unexpectedly runs dry. A word stops in your throat, and you must wait for infra-bodily traffic to clear while the absence of meaning gapes wide and dangerous in the social world.
- Crossed wires. A regular experience for stutterers, crossed wires describes the state of “talking past each other” that might begin when one party “mishears” the other and then feedbacks error into the conversation.
- The swerve. Clinicians prefer the term “avoidance” to describe the strategy stutterers employ when we sense an oncoming phoneme over which we expect to trip. I might, for example, begin to say “I agree” but change course, swerving around a potential misfire to substitute on the fly: “I don’t know.”
- The cut-off. This accident is one of attempted repair, caused when interlocutors or bystanders rush to the scene of an accident, interrupt, and reimpose order by attempting to predict and finish the stalled (or otherwise damaged) message according to a dominant grammar.
- The gridlock. Stuttering ferociously at the front of a queue, for example, halts the flow of information, people, and capital; it stalls a lane of traffic and tempts impatient honks in the form of tapped toes and glances, as everyone waits for an undetermined time until information and thus bodies will once again flow free.