Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
Just as significant are the interactional consequences of stammering, and in order to understand these
we need to examine how the stammer unfolds during interaction and how participants deal with its
various manifestations. Second, the emphasis on naturally occurring talk allows us to consider the
nature of stammering in a natural everyday setting. As most research on fluency disorders takes place
within a clinical or speech therapy environment and is often of an experimental nature, the
methodological strategy adopted by conversation analysts represents a considerable strength. The
inability of most people who stammer to transfer fluent speech back into the world of everyday talk
suggests that the nature of this form of interaction creates specific demands on them and represents a
significant factor in their ability to manage the disorder. Moreover, given the serious problems
associated with stabilising and generalising fluency outside the therapeutic setting (Syder 1992:144),
and Bloodstein’s (1995:445) assertion that ‘relatively little is known about the subject of relapse’, it
seems sensible to examine the site of these difficulties more thoroughly.
In various ways, then, this type of analysis has the potential to shed light on many previously
inexplicable or generally misunderstood behaviours of PWS. When these are interpreted from a
conversation analytic perspective their relationship to the organisational constraints of ordinary
conversation should become more apparent. By drawing attention to the distinctive and innovative
ethnomethodological research programme of conversation analysis and suggesting how it might be utilised
to increase our understanding of the nature of stammering and its specific social organisation it is hoped
that other researchers will be prompted into taking up the challenge of future research on dysfluent talk.
This may have substantial practical payoffs and as Martin Duckworth (1988:73) perceptively observed, a
broadening of perspective in relation to stammering is likely to have 'more therapeutic significance than the
creation of yet another "method" for treating the stutterer'. Indeed, as the procedures of conversation
analysis have 'already proved themselves capable of yielding by far the most substantial insights that have
yet been gained into the organization of conversation' (Levinson 1983:287), they hold the potential of
opening up another dimension to our understanding of stammering.
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