Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
handicapped children. The turn taking system is one of the most fundamental structures for the organisation
of conversation and the ability to successfully manage turn transfer is a significant accomplishment (see
Section 4 of this paper for a more detailed discussion of the turn-taking system and its relevance to
stammering). One of the basic features of the turn-taking system is the way in which it operates to
minimize gaps and overlaps and it is this question of overlap (both how to avoid it and how to limit its
scope when it does occur) that Peskett and Wootton wish to draw our attention to. In relation to
simultaneous talk they make the distinction between overlaps that occur at potential completion points
(transition relevance places or TRPs in conversation analytic parlance) and those that occur in the middle of
another's turn, and suggest that:
whether the production of overlaps initiated by the children could be seen as clearly
violative in terms of normal turn-taking coordination depended upon where they were
positioned in another speaker's turn (Peskett & Wootton 1985:270).
Their findings showed that over half the overlaps were either near-simultaneous starts or were in the
vicinity of TRPs and that the overall rate of mid-unit overlaps did not exceed six per cent of the total
communicative vocalizations. They also examined the children's behaviour when overlaps did occur and
although they observed that various communicative skills to remedy the position were being developed,
there were substantial variations among the four children studied (Peskett & Wootton 1985:271). In fact,
while three of the children employed techniques which exhibited an awareness of the fact that overlap had
occurred the least advanced child did not use any of them. This led Peskett and Wootton (1985:271) to the
conclusion that although this child 'was apparently able to organize his behaviour so as to avoid being in
overlap most of the time, his behaviour when in overlap did not clearly display that he treated the fact of
being in overlap as a problem'.
The significance of this piece of research in the current context is that it illustrates the innovative
way that conversation analysis can be utilized in order to shed light on an area previously regarded as
marginal to sociological investigation. Moreover, the particular manner in which they utilise the turn
taking model to analyse the conversational abilities of Down's Syndrome children can serve as a
template for the investigation of the speech of people who stammer. Anthony Wootton has employed a
conversation analytic perspective in several other studies (Wootton 1981a; 1981b; 1987; 1990) which
continue his focus on the communicative abilities of Down's Syndrome children. However, given the
level of communicative development of his subjects and the fact that many were unable to use any
recognizable words, there is a substantial emphasis on non-verbal activity. While this work would be of
fundamental importance to research on the development of speech dysfluencies in childhood, it is of
limited value to the study of adults who stammer, most of whom have the ability to communicate
'normally'.
In recent years conversation analytic procedures have been applied to the study of aphasia with
considerable success (see for example, Booth and Perkins, 1999; Copeland, 1989; Goodwin, 1995;
Laasko and Klippi, 1999; Lindsay and Wilkinson, 1999; Milroy and Perkins, 1992; Perkins, 1995;
Simmons-Mackie and Damico 1996, 1997; Wilkinson 1995). According to Hesketh and Sage (1999)
this upsurge in interest in conversational data stems from its ability to shed light on the effects of
communication impairment in a meaningful and realistic manner. This has led to a growing emphasis
on the collaborative nature of communication which has opened up new avenues for research and
produced significant therapeutic benefits. In the remainder of this section I will provide a brief
summary of one particular study that has obvious implications for stammering research, before
highlighting some of the more general issues to emerge from the application of conversation analysis to
aphasia.
A study by Lisa Perkins (1995) on the impact of linguistic impairments on conversational ability in
aphasia using conversation analysis provides an indication of the potential rewards a similar study of
stammering may yield. Her analysis of the sharing of the conversational floor for three aphasic participants
combined both qualitative and quantitative techniques in a similar way to Zimmerman and West's (1975)
study of male/female interaction. Although Perkins is aware of the dangers associated with quantifying
conversational behaviour she believes 'it has the major advantage of facilitating comparison which is
important in the evaluation of the effectiveness of therapy' (Perkins 1995: 373). The data for this study
comprised recordings of three aphasic participants, both in conversation with their relatives and with the
researcher. The purpose of the quantitative analysis was to determine how much the aphasic participants
contributed to the conversations, and comparison was made both within participant (in conversation with
relatives and with the researcher) and between participants. The qualitative analysis aimed to uncover the
management strategies that influenced the unequal distribution that emerged in the data. In particular the
operation of the turn-taking system was examined with a specific focus on the timing of turn transition, the
treatment of silences, and the management of repair. The findings displayed some significant differences in
terms of the distribution of turns both between the different participants and across the different partners
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