Talking About Stuttering

Stuttering has received a lot of attention in the last year, mostly because of the Academy Award winning motion picture The King’s Speech.  The film shined a spotlight on the speech impediment that affects a reported 1% of the population. Unfortunately, the movie caused many viewers to believe that stuttering is easily “fixed” and people that still stutter are not working hard enough to “cure” themselves. For generations, popular culture narratives like film, television, and even comic books have portrayed people that stutter as weak, unheroic, or two dimensional comic foils that provide little besides “talking funny.” These portrayals have allowed many viewers to believe that stuttering is sign of a mental, emotional, or spiritual deficiency and that people who stutter should not be take seriously. This view is quite damaging to many of the millions of people who stutter because the misconceptions make life vastly more difficult for them. These popular culture narratives influence how average people treat those that stutter and affect the lives of both groups. These narratives seem to be changing in newer works like the film Rocket Science in which a teenager who stutters is shown a well rounded character but there still are many more narratives that create unrealistic or even offensive characters that stutter. Some of the most interesting new popular culture narratives concerning people that stutter are created by a San Francisco comedian Nina G,  in which she discuses the realities of stuttering. Nina G is quite funny, very introspective, and entertaining. She provides a wonderful outlet for understanding stuttering and what it is like to have to deal with this speech impediment.  I highly recommend her work for those of you that would like to know more about people that stutter.