In confronting fluency as an ideology, the Did I Stutter project aims to consider how language and conversation become directed by a demand of austerity of speech and vocal performance. In analyzing fluency as an ideological demand of hygiene in oral communication, a goal might be to think of how fluency develops its own imaginary, in other words, the diverse set of presuppositions, fears and hopes associated with an ideology oriented toward suppressing vocal difference.

I use the word austerity in this piece, evoking its meaning of “extreme simplicity of appearance or style” to describe how ableist practices intend to curtail and reduce the vast variety of body expressions and voices. The austere is that which has been streamlined; is simple, not complicated; that which is controlled; that which is predictable.

The ideology of fluency comes from a perspective of viewing communication economically. Word economy, a series of values placed onto speech, is a necessary labor for speech to perform in integrating the subject within a diverse set of social forces. If fluency has a set of attitudes it is an emotional attachment to a certain specific arrangement and practical use of speech. This attachment is perpetually destabilized by the supposed-unpredictability of different speech.

Speech Language Pathology, as a knowledge system, came into existence to secure conversation from interruptions, to maintain clarity, and to ensure that conversations go on with a singular voice, instead many different echoes and syllable islands.

The teachings of linguistic regulation push subjects to be worried about interruptions and to pursue an ideal of conversational clarity.  Some conversation partners may gesture or wince or sometimes ask a stutterer to repeat themselves. These demands are holdovers from the use of language within modernity for labor purposes. In the early Victorian era and in Europe, theater and official declarations centered on producing a hegemonic singular clarity. In the United States in the post-war era, lecturers were a primary form of entertainment; in all of the spoken arts, including in debate, norms oriented toward clear speech served an economic function: to make speech efficient and therefore valuable.

We speakers now walk around with hundreds of years of history of the glorification of clear speech and have to grapple with a fluency-oriented position toward speech constantly. In every confrontation with a person who feels the need to correct a stutterers’ speech, a new anxiety is made; mistakes are pointed out; impaled within our psych; prevented from floating into forgotten like so many other specific words. The series of performances done to point out distortions in speech, from the demand of clarification to the interruption to the finishing of words; all of these foment an incompleteness complex in the stuttering voice: the stutter from a place of emotional and bodily expression into an injury to the austerity of modern communication architecture.

In building the stuttering subject into a deviant persona, the stutterer is possessed by a ghost of the fluencentric imaginary. We are haunted by the disruption of our voices; we hear the routines of speech devaluation played out in an endless drama on the background of our speech. This is why one of the calls to fix stuttering—the “relaxation” cure—is so ironic; on top of a background of mandatory fluency, where slight mistakes are socially flagged as reasons for humiliation, the stutterer is told that if they would just be less anxious, there would be no problem. But this is false since the anxiety of the social group is projected upon the stutterer. In being told to calm down, in being told to relax and even when the stutterer has to suffer for a view of stuttering as lack of confidence, in all of these situations, a hologram of mass societal anxiety over inaustere speech is seen in the face of the stutterer. The able co-conversationalist must understand that the anxiety of the stutterer is an anxiety of a personal and collective history of targeting and othering unsmooth speech.

When anxiety is discussed as an element of disabled representation, when a disabled person is seen apologizing too much, often there is a criticism of that person’s character: it is seen as a representation of the individual as spoiled by the impairment. But roles are conditioned: anxiety as an affect is too often blamed on individuals when it has only arrived in the individual after being transferred and imposed upon them by wider social structures. 


-Zach

Here’s a bold claim:

Communication and clarity have nothing in common.

We are compelled to correct our speech and refine our syntax and arguments in the name of communication and understanding,
                                         and this is a joke played at our expense. 

There is no such thing as clear communication.

[C.ccaaa.ccc. you hear me? 
Hhh---hhhave you ever heard me?]

We have lashed ‘communication’ to ‘understanding’ to the notion of exchanging ideas that are locked in our heads. We frantically heave lines to each others’ minds like San Fransican street-car wires—a society teetered as/at/on the crisscross of nerves.

(what we call)
“Communication” is born of nervous fears of skull-shaped-soundproof-rooms.
Of wires sliced and lost messages. Of no wires at all.   

We fret, hanging much on communication but giving it so little.  

But what if

Communication is a public, a compost of voices to make meanings, plural, together.
Meanings that swell between, that pool (and thrash) within shared time. 

What if

Communication is a string of overlapped misunderstandings,
a sagged body of splintered meanings and voices

that we cobble together each moment limping and crippled along.

It is both invitation and threat
and we so often choose the latter.

Stand up straight!  
Get me the brace!
We’re late—where the fuck is the body double?

We play dress-up, pretending communication is a normal body: a non-disabled body that stands straight and walks on its own, thank you very much; a male and virile body; a straight body never veering from its course; a respectable white body that can be trusted to deliver messages. When we’re feeling our best, communication sheds its body and becomes a direct link between minds, a psychic postal man, a Vulcan mind-meld, telepathy.

Telepathy is a dream invented circa 1880
by white bourgeois men
isolated and afraid
of the sin
of voices playing in the dirt.

I think we should be concerned that communication has become a technique.

[Ddd.do. yyy.yyoou. hear me?]

We now think communication is a problem to be solved
through clarity, and if need be, sing-song therapy

If only we could understand each other!

If only stutterers could speak clearly and take their part in the world!

while never realizing that

Clarity is a technique of productivity.  
Fluency is a technology of bureaucracy.
Understanding is a wink and a nudge and every back-room deal.

Those in the know call “effective communication” a “basic human right”
to be made available and accessible to all.

Effective for who, I want to know.

“Clear communication” and “understanding” will never mend our problems nor will it help us live together. It will never lead to jjj..Uustice nor break apart ableism, racism, sexism, transphobia, nor poverty. The master’s tools, Audre Lordre reminds us, will never never dis—never dismantle the ma-ma-aster’s house. Clear and “effective” communication may make dysfluent speakers better adjusted, more normal, productive, and efficient cogs in the ffFFFff---   FfffffFFF…      in FffflFLuent machine of (late) liberal-capitalism, but will never create justice. 

dd.Ddo you have e—ars to h--hear      ? to Fffffffffffffffeel and touch? To   ?

Communication is the is the pract- is the practice of is the ppract. ------ splintered –m-m-m-m-m-mean –is the practise oof- ings and vvvoices cob-b-b-b

 
                                                                                bbb
 

       b------


                                            led to-
tgether
as we
we-w-w-we

as we limp
limp and limp limp ---
and cr--


as
we wel liimp and Cccci---pple along

together. It is a p..pppractice—a shared, p.pppar---- ----  aartial, and imPUre effort—an art, an ethic, a way of llliivving ccccrip
living ww-ww-ww--ith others.  


-Josh

As a dysfluency pride project, Did I Stutter adamantly supports the right of individuals to incorporate stuttering as an element of identity formation. To this end, we are aware of the highly politicized language used by others to categorize our bodies and voices. We consciously refer to ourselves as stutterers instead of people who stutter, which is the language preferred and perpetuated by the field of speech-language pathology.

Person-first language was originally introduced by disability advocacy groups in the 1980s to fight the dehumanization of disabled people and has evolved into a tool of ableism used to oppress stutterers and inhibit the formation of self-advocacy networks. It employs awkward phrasing that marks stuttering as an undesirable trait and reinforces non-disabled speech as normative. The person-first label ‘person who stutters’ is often abbreviated to PWS. Using acronyms to refer to an individual or group of stigmatized people accentuates the marginalization of that group.

These linguistic standards are imposed upon disabled people, although many disability groups are very explicit in their rejection of person-first language (the Deaf, Blind, and Autistic communities, for example). The strongest support for person-first language comes from non-disabled parents of disabled children and clinicians working with the disabled, individuals who are not using the language to refer to themselves. Person-first language is codified in policy by many social work, therapy, and academic organizations, which may require their employees to use it.

Many stuttering self-help organizations model person-first language, referring to individuals as people who stutter. These organizations may support stuttering pride and view their members positively, but insisting on person-first language reinforces the message that stuttering is a defect. The tone of these groups is commonly one of minimizing or ‘overcoming’ stuttering, and members are discouraged from adopting dysfluency as an element of identity.

Person-first language, with its emphasis on the person and not the disability, is effective in separating disabled people from each other and lessening the strength of community formation. To form communities of political significance, we need to be seen as stutterers (and Autistic people, and wheelchair users, etc.) instead of people who stutter, people with autism, people who use wheelchairs.

The distinctions between person-first and identity-first language can seem insignificant to non-disabled people, to whom these labels aren’t applied. While proponents claim that referring to us as people first is more respectful, they dismiss the fact that only stigmatized identities are given person-first labels. We are not expected to call ourselves ‘people with whiteness’ and no one seems worried that our identities will be reduced to our shoe size or eye color. Similarly, non-disabled people are not expected to refer to themselves as ‘people who are not people who stutter’.

Some people prefer to be called people who stutter, or people with disabilities. It is their right to choose the language of their identity, and their choice should be respected. That right should be respected among all disabled people. There is no linguistic standard that can be applied so broadly. No person should be burdened with the duty of asserting their humanity as a means of introduction. We are people. To ensure that this fact is not overlooked in discourse about our bodies is not our responsibility.

 -Erin