h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The 'covert' stammer – a personal account - A87707857
Author: Otto Fisch - In my Joy Division oven gloves - U182089


Fresh from the Edited Guide Writing Workshop.... now much improved and tidied up. Further thoughts/feedback very welcome....

Stammering does have its written equivalent, redundant repetitions of a 'a' word in a written line, or omissions of ' ' key word, as with the redundant 'a' and missing 'a' above, in which case its considered symptomatic of manic depressive or cyclothymic personality.

The term 'kinesic stuttering' is used to describe situations where people attempting to pass one another in a doorway or hallway keep getting in one another's way. Of course, this can be something sub-cultural, where one is accustomed to a 'keep left' rule and the other is accustomed to a 'keep right' rule.

Missing out an 'a' or including one too many sounds more like a typo to me than anything else, though I would imagine that it might be something associated with dyslexia - maybe. I can't see that the casual link between that and bipolar would be, though. It all sounds rather improbable to me, though I'm open to evidence on this.

I'm not sure about 'kinesic stuttering'. I can find very little (google) evidence to support the view that it's in widespread use. I prefer Douglas Adams' word for it, which is a "Driotwich". In any case, it's not obvious to me what the parallel with stuttering is....

What an absolutely fascinating entry, Otto!
You are right, stammer isn't very high on anybody's agenda for disabilities here, either. At least not that I'm aware of.
This entry is enlightening.

You are right, btw: I knew someone who stammered (when I was a teenager). I do not recall any particular behaviour towards him, though. He was one of the people I went to school with - we had to go to school by train, so all kids on that train were more or less a group vs the adults on that train. It would be interesting to know how D remembers that time, though.

...not just an 'a' or ' ' ,missing 'a', any redundancy (that 'that') or omission ' ' interupts the flow of narrative. Examples in the literature include Karl Menninger's studies. He's exceptionally lucid.

Most psychological texts have brief sections including symptomatic quotes from patients. It's nearly impossible to bring material like this up on a Google search, reference to the texts is essential.

For my own part, I personally view the schizoid and manic-depressive extremes of self expression as the extremes of a spectrum or standard deviation of self expression measured in terms of the size of the gestalt statement the individual in point can grasp, with the schizoids at the low end of the spectrum and the manic-depressives at the high end, where the extreme schizoid typically loses track of the the substance of what is being talked about with every dependent clause and be very disjointed in their self expression, while the manic depressive may be able to handle a gestalt of several thousand words and may be very recursive.

On 'kinesic stuttering' another term is 'dancing' but that one has unfortunate connotations.

Possibly not very relevant your article anyway.

Notes on stammering, I've got problems that way myself and am much less prone to stammer in the social context if I rehearse what I may want to say. Often I do this with a considerable number of variations and try to do it privately rather than alarming people unnecessarily.

As a disaffected researcher, I am not that bothered about ehat happens to the EG but, as a stammerer myself, I welcome this addition to the EG as long overdue. If poeple are going to write EG artciles then they might as well write pertinent ones.

I don't stammer very much now but it comes out occasionally when I am tired, stressed or angry. Mocking my stammer then ends up having profound consequences, often physical, for the person involved.

You might care to add that everybody who encounters a stammerer seems to know of someone who took up singing or ventriloquism or acting or whatever and 'cured it'. This is very irritating, especially if you can't sing, can't act and think there is nothing less funny than pretending that the doll on your lap is a human being.

Also, there is definitely a genetic component but this is treatable. My daugther was a very early walker and spoke in sentences long before she was two years old, but then went on to develop an appalling stammer. Two years of behaviourally based speech therapy sorted it out. Early intervention works.

Thanks Felonious - that means a lot, coming from someone who (a) has a stammer; and (b) is disaffected about the edited guide. In general, I think the EG has to abandon the 'encyclopaedia' model and be more about personal experiences (although largely factual). I didn't think this entry would be eligible for the EG - and I'm sure it wouldn't have been when I first joined - but it appears that it is.

I've added a line on the far-fetched anecdote... that's a really good point. What's - frankly - massively insulting about that kind of thing is that it pushes the blame back onto the person with the stammer. And it's not only insulting, but actively harmful.

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the 5% of under 5s who stammer cease to stammer because they 'grow out of it' without intervention, what proportion will lose the stammer only with treatment, and what proportion won't lose it no matter what help they get.

Well, I'm just waiting for some twonk to turn up here and suggest removal of all references to the first person. That's what passes for constructive comment, in some people's opinion.

Well if they do that, they will look really foolish. I'd suggest that an Entry of this nature would attract a great many readers.

Well, to be fair, FM, the 'first person' issue has already been discussed in the 'workshop' thread for this entry and it's been agreed that it's fine in this case. Apparently even the inherited EG rules do allow first person guide entries in certain circumstances, which didn't used to be the case. I've written/co-written at least two entries in which I quote myself in the third person, which was weird. http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/brunel/F22114576?thread=8281953

Any more for any more on this? I'm gradually going through adding in links to other guide entries, and I'll post again when it's done....

Just to agree that there definitely is room for first-person entries and this is definitely one of 'em. An eye-opener.

Rod

Very nice. Excellent to have this kind of entry coming through.

Just a comment to flesh out your 5% of under fives figure.

Having heard it from a speech therapist, it's rather common for children to have a temporary stammer at a particular stage of speech development, around two or three - it's the brain going faster than the mouth, and generally goes away in a month or three. Both my kids had this a bit.

sprout

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Congratulations!

Lanzababy

well done!

Also, congratulations!

Congratulations.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for all your helpful comments. I'm only part way through adding the links, and I'd be happy to finish that, or leave it to the sub-editor (assuming we have them) - whichever s/he prefers....

"Having heard it from a speech therapist, it's rather common for children to have a temporary stammer at a particular stage of speech development, around two or three - it's the brain going faster than the mouth, and generally goes away in a month or three. Both my kids had this a bit."

This is an interesting one. I would liked to have said more about how the 5% of under 5s reduces to 1% of adults. I can think of quite a few toddlers and ex-toddlers of my acquaintance who had the 'brain faster than mouth' stammer, but I don't know if that counts or not. It would be interesting to know how much of the reduction takes place in the few years after 5, and how much in later childhood. No idea. If I can find any figures, I'm put them in via an update.

Hmmm

My eldest grandson, (3+) doesn't stammer but he does slur & rush his words. As far as I can tell (with not too much experience) he's ahead of his age with vocabulary so I put it down to brain faster than mouth (before seeing you entry). Getting him to slow down & speak clearly is a problem for his granddad (who's lost some hearing). (His brother (nearly 2) seems relatively slow in speaking - he doesn't need it with that brother!).