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Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
recipient's failure to respond on picking up the receiver and by producing a repeat summons, the caller is
actually drawing attention to the official absence of a second pair part. From a person who stammers'
perspective, then, the sound of the telephone represents a summons to talk, to talk promptly after lifting the
phone, and to construct that talk in a form that constitutes a response to the summons. In other words, upon
picking up the receiver the person who stammers does not have the same freedom to remain silent as he
had prior to self-selection at TRP's. Moreover, given that speakers typically employ standard responses in
telephone conversations, circumlocution does not seem to be a viable option for people who stammer. In
fact, in many instances, it is likely to create a more negative impression than the dysfluencies which the
person who stammers is attempting to avoid. One possible solution is to use ‘starters’ and this may be
employed as a deliberate strategy by some people who stammer. The obligation to speak immediately on
lifting the phone puts considerable time pressure on people who stammer and a decision to use a starter in
this position may have advantages. First, it would ensure immediate vocalisation and thus prevent a silence
from being misinterpreted, and second it may provide the quickest available route to the target utterance
(e.g. hello).
For a variety of reasons 'hello' is the most common response form in domestic/personal calls (see
Schegloff 1986:123) and, as already alluded to, to substitute it with some other response form may lead to
certain inferences being drawn. The social organisation of telephone openings, then, imposes a variety of
constraints upon speakers and this may help to explain why 'to a greater or lesser extent, the telephone
haunts all people who stutter' (Carlisle 1985:181). Indeed, if there is one word that best sums up the
relationship between people who stammer and the telephone it is probably 'fear'. Although, clearly not all
people who stammer react in exactly the same way, the sound of the telephone ringing is likely to generate
some form of anxiety in most people who stammer. While this reaction may be, to some degree, the result
of conditioning, detailed analysis of conversations involving people who stammer may provide a more
fundamental explanation.
However, it is not just recipients who experience anxiety but callers as well, and some people who
stammer will go to great lengths to avoid using the phone at all. By dialing a number and thereby initiating
a summons the caller is propelled into the midst of a speech situation by implicating a three turn sequence
(Hopper 1992:56). There are very few situations in which people who stammer have absolutely no
alternative but to meet a particular word head-on and we should not underestimate the difficulties that
adjacency pair formats create for people who stammer. Indeed, the constraints imposed by the adjacency
pair sequences within conversational beginnings closes down many of the possible routes out of
stammering, making dysfluencies more likely. Of course adjacency pairs occur in environments other than
openings and a consideration of some of these should help to develop our discussion.
While all adjacency pairs are structurally capable of creating interactional difficulties for people who
stammer the potential for trouble is directly related to the number of viable responses. Nofsinger's
(1991:76) observation that 'participants will "go looking for" missing second pair parts', suggests one
possible explanation for the anxiety expressed by people who stammer in the face of direct questions,
especially those that require a specific answer. So, for example, people who stammer report most difficulty
in responding to direct questions that require specific answers such as those relating to their name, address
or telephone number. In these situations common strategies such as word substitution, circumlocution or
even feigning forgetfulness are simply not realistic options. As the American speech pathologist, Fred
Murray (1991:28) observed, 'of all the words in a person's vocabulary, his name is representative of
something he should know and utter with unhesitating automaticity. To do otherwise implies all sorts of
possibilities, none of them associated with normality'. While most adjacency pair first parts are not quite as
restrictive as this, the fact that they require matching second pair parts, places unwelcome constraints on a
group of people already circumscribed in their ability to communicate. Although many people who
stammer have developed strategies to overcome these constraints, the ultimate success of such strategies is
dependent on the nature and severity of the stammer. Of course, the actions and reactions of coconversationalists
are also important and an understanding of the various idiosyncrasies that accompany
stammering may have an impact. The interactional benefits that this kind of 'inside knowledge' can yield
are evident from the following account of one person who stammer's encounter with a New York operator:
After the operator had come on the line and had said, “Number, please,” “Gramercy,”
the word exchange in the number, simply stuck in my throat. It was a bad block; I
kept trying and trying, but the only sound I could make was a faint croak. The
operator must have heard it because suddenly she said, “Sir, I know what your
difficulty is. Now, I have plenty of time. You just relax and say the number when you
can.” She said it in the nicest way, and in a moment I was able to say easily
“Gramercy”, the number, and “thankyou” (Murray 1991:29).
While an appreciation of the difficulties people who stammer are likely to face in telephone
conversation may help to create a better interactional environment this knowledge will not in itself
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