This is a continuation of our series on Disability Studies as it relates to stuttering. Carolina Ayala's thesis research paper, Myself As I am, Not as Others See Me: Stuttering, Identity and Acceptance was submitted to the Graduate Program in Critical Disability Studies at York University in 2009.
Disability Studies is a relatively recent field in academia, yet today almost all of Canada's major universities have degree programs in this area. In what will be the first of a series, this article will summarize a paper by a student in a Disabilities Studies program who has specialized in the topic of stuttering. The student featured here is Joshua St. Pierre, an MA candidate in philosophy at the University of Alberta. His paper is entitled "The Construction of the Disabled Speaker: Locating Stuttering in Disability Studies."
For people who stutter, picking up a telephone to make a call can be like picking up a live cobra – only the phone is worse. Stutterers often share the agony of having to speak on the phone.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about why this is so. And here’s what I’ve come up with. Someone once told me about that about 70 per cent of the meaning we get from dialogue comes from non-verbal communication. The rest comes from verbal communication.
Two years ago, the Stuttering Foundation awarded the 1974 Bachman-Turner Overdrive tune You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet an award for being the "most unique" of all the songs that feature stuttering. It stood out because it is about a real person: Randy Bachman's brother, Glen, who stuttered. Randy performed a version of the song with stuttering in the chorus as a tribute to him, never intending it to be released. But the band's manager thought the stuttering version had more character, and it ended up being used for the album.
In this amusing article featured in the Australian newspaper the Age, noted author Kate Forsyth relates her battles with speech difficulties and memories of her childhood. Has anyone else ever heard of "spoonerisms"?
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Douglas Channel, BC
Murray Minchin is a postal worker from Kitimat, British Columbia, and a vocal advocate for protecting the Douglas Channel, part of the coastal region he calls home. When he heard about plans for a pipeline and marine terminal there three years ago, the potential damage to the environment worried him. Despite his stutter and chronic shyness that had affected him his whole life, he decided to become a spokesperson for the cause and stand up to the huge Alberta gas distribution company, Enbridge.