It's Just How We Talk: Unfolding a History of Muting and Demanding Fluency from People who Stutter

Abstract

This thesis traces a genealogy of stuttering to unveil how fluency has been constructed as a linguistic, medical, moral, and cultural norm within the scope of Western modernity, roughly from the 1840’s onwards, and how people who stutter (PWS) have been historically subjected to mandatory treatment and disciplining to achieve fluency in the clinic, in the classroom, in public spaces, in the homes and within themselves. Drawing on both historical and more contemporary medical,- elocutionary,- and therapeutic descriptions, manuals, and interventions, this thesis argues how the stutterer has never been a stable pathological subject, but rather a product of sociopolitically-bound discourses that equate speaking with utility, morality, citizenship, competence, desirability and futurity. By applying an intersectional analysis, factoring in gender, ethnicity and class, this thesis establishes how the archetype of the “stutterer” was historically fantasized as white, male, and middle-class, while women and ethnic groups disappear into diagnostic blind spots, that potentially leaves them uncounted for, unarchived, and thus unimaginable to the clinical gaze. On the other hand, evidence in prevalence and pressure-related determinants in stuttering suggests that stuttering could be a symptom of disordered societal structures. Fundamentally, this thesis proposes that reclaiming the right to stutter, resignifying the definitions of fluency and disfluency and developing a collective consciousness are political strategies vital to the futures of PWS.