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Disfluency vs. Dysfluency: What's in a Name? 

8/5/2015

6 Comments

 
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People have pointed out that that we at Did I Stutter regularly use the term ‘dysfluent’ rather than the conventional ‘disfluent’. This was and continues to be a very deliberate choice for us. While this difference is in some ways nitpicky, humour the language nerd in me for just a moment. For us, the use of these two spellings, these two prefixes, shows the diverging political understanding of stuttering between the disability studies/rights movement and the medicalized disciplines and industries.

So what’s the difference: dis- vs. dys- ?   

Dis- is originally a Latin prefix that means “lack of” or “not.” It is used as a fairly simple negation (as in the instances of “dislike” and “disavow”), removal (as in “dismember”), or reversal (as in “disassociate”) (OED).

The term “disfluency” is similarly used to indicate a type of speech that is merely not fluent. It is a sterile and clinical term that turns our wild forms of speech variation into a simple lack or failure judged against the presumed normalcy and desirability of smooth speech. ‘Disfluent’ hides its values behind an apparent objectivity.       

Dys- is originally a Greek prefix indicating “bad, difficult” or “destroying the good sense of a word, or increasing its bad sense” (OED). Unlike dis-, dys- is not a simple negation, but marks a transgression: something has gone wrong, particularly in a moral sense.

We accordingly take ‘dysfluency’ to be a far more honest term than ‘disfluency.’ While ‘disfluent’ feigns at being objective and sterile, ‘dysfluent’ recognizes that when we stutter we are not simply performing a lack, but we are transgressing the entire moral code of how society expects us to speak. To stutter is to disobey, to overstep the narrow boundaries of able-bodied speech.

Chris Constantino recently claimed that stuttering is a form of civil disobedience. Using the term ‘dysfluent’ helps us at DIS be aware of the subversive possibilities of our unpredictable and unruly speech. If stuttering is transgressive, let’s own that and make it ours.  

Obviously how people use words is far more important than how they are spelled, which puts definite limits on the value of word analysis. People who use ‘disfluent’ aren’t necessarily bound to medicalized notions of speech and can still use it to mean something more transgressive. However, the fact that ‘disfluent’ is the accepted standard within medicalized communities compells me in itself to describe my speech differently. There is nothing clinical about how I talk. Our voices are anything but a lack. 

-Josh

6 Comments
Priscilla Carlson
7/8/2016 11:40:06 am

So...I am confused. I never used to stutter, but when I had a left hemisphere stroke in 2011, I now have trouble getting some words out or smoothly like I used to. It is more apparent when I become tired or there are too many distractions around me. So now the question is: do I have DYS-fluency or DIS-fluency? Isn't it in the dictionary as DISfluency?

Reply
Brian
5/21/2017 02:35:43 am

Medically you have a disfluency but by "did i stutter(DIS)" you have a dysfluency.

Reply
Peter
5/23/2017 11:56:22 am

Actually you have an aphasia.

Reply
Tom Harper link
6/19/2019 11:06:03 am

I would like to know the term used by professionals to explain the following condition.

When speaking and you pause to say a word in your “brain”,
or your “mind” before speaking it.

If I have a problem saying a word such as banana and stop and think about it and then can say it properly, what is that called?

Reply
Rashiqa Mariam
11/24/2019 03:33:36 am

It firstly depends on the duration you take to utter the word, secondly how often does it happen matters , and then is there any specific sound or syllable that makes you stop, think of the word in the mind and then utter.
If you think, you often do it, duration is longer for you to utter, and it only happens with few specific sounds and syllables, then it's called “dysfluency”.

If it happens rarely or you just take time to think of any word before you utter, it would not be appropriate to term it “dysfluency”.
You're absolutely fine, you might just be a slow speaker.

Concluding “dysfluency” often refers to a problem.

Reply
Linda D'Antonio link
2/23/2020 10:25:53 am

This was a very revealing and helpful discussion of the two terms. Wendell Johnson, the modern father of speech pathology said: "The way we talk about a topic,iInfluences the way we think about it" This was very helpful for me in thinking about my clients who 'stutter'. Thank you for this thoughtful discussion!

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