Abstract
Wilkinson and Morris analyse how stammering impacts on the speaker’s ability to produce their utterances on the telephone with a non-stammering interlocutor. They note that stammering results in speakers being unable to fulfil one of the main expectations of producing an utterance in a conversation—that it progress to its end point in a smooth and undisrupted manner. They then show how this utterance feature regularly has the consequence that the other interlocutor starts to talk before the speaker with a stammer has completed their turn. The analysis highlights some key problems faced by people who stammer on the telephone as well as exploring how they can employ strategies in an attempt to make these problems less likely to occur.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Stammering’ and ‘stuttering’ are synonyms. The former is commonly used in the UK (and will be used in this chapter), while the latter is more commonly used in, for example, the USA, where many of the videorecordings we discuss in this chapter appear to have been made.
- 2.
This is different to, for example, anomia in the talk of people with aphasia where it is commonly at the level of progressing to the next word that delayed progressivity is evident (Wilkinson 2019). That form of delayed progressivity may be marked by signs of searching for a word or phrase, including production of the word search token ‘uhm’, and utterances such as ‘what’s the word?’.
- 3.
It is notable, however, that in her address to the camera after the call Tabitha explicitly comments on how good the restaurant employee was as a call recipient of a person who stammers, and how this kind of response is unusual. She says, for example: ‘That was a really awesome reaction… That guy was super patient and understanding. He didn’t really do anything wrong, which is – sadly – not that common’.
- 4.
It should be noted that the reasons why the talk of people who stammer can regularly be treated by another participant as a trouble source may be more complex than simply the fact that the turn is produced dysfluently. Informal observation of the data (which we are not in a position to expand on here more systematically) suggests that on some occasions a PWS may produce talk which is more ‘compacted’ than might generally be the case in typical speakers. The compactness may be at the level of social action and its position within the conversation (e.g. an action is produced in an earlier ‘slot’ than might be expected in the conversation) or of form (e.g. the lexical and grammatical construction of the turn may be different/more compacted compared to that commonly used by typical speakers). In Extract 4, for instance, the PWS’ question in lines 02–05 may be slightly unexpected to the call receiver who may instead be expecting a more explicit ‘reason for call’ in this slot (e.g. ‘I’m phoning to enquire about swimming lessons you offer for children’).
- 5.
While the words are a repeat of his original question (in line 08), the prosodic features, including a stress on ‘how’ (marked in the transcript with underlining) make this hearable as an OIR in response to Tabitha’s ongoing turn and not simply a repeat of the question as if Tabitha had not spoken.
- 6.
Extracts 8 and 9 can be seen as empirical instances of the risk for people who stammer talking on the telephone which was highlighted as a hypothetical possibility by James et al (1999, p. 301) in the quote above i.e. that ‘should blocking difficulties arise, their interlocutor may be unclear as to what is happening’.
- 7.
Not all incursions into another’s turn space are necessarily perceivable as interruptive or invasive. See, for example, Lerner (1996) for speaker practices which allow another participant to enter the speaker’s turn space in ways which are not necessarily treated as interruptive.
- 8.
This is not to suggest that every incursion into the turn space of people who stammer will necessarily be perceived by them to be unwelcome or unhelpful; such issues of what is deemed to be helpful or unhelpful in particular circumstances await further research. Rather, the more general point is perhaps that people who stammer are more vulnerable than typical speakers to others entering their turn space, whether or not on that particular occasion they facilitate this happening.
- 9.
In his discussion of ‘stigma’, Goffman (1963, p. 41) terms such people who are ‘in the know’ the ‘wise’.
- 10.
In the sense used by Wilkinson (2019) the presentation of oneself towards the start of the call as a stammerer (for instance, in the form of an announcement) and the request for the interlocutor to be patient/allow more time (Extracts 10 and 11) can be seen as an example of an interactional adaptation. Adaptations can function as means of dealing with possible negative consequences of the communicative impairment, and a property of this particular type of adaptation by the PWS is that it can be seen to be designed to put some interactional pressure on the interlocutor to also adapt their usual conduct.
- 11.
Since our interest in this quote concerns its content rather than how it is produced, the transcription is a simple orthographic one which does not include the speaker’s dysfluencies.
References
Acton, C. (2004). A conversation analytic perspective on stammering: Some reflections and observations. Stammering Research,1(3), 249–70.
Bricker-Katz, G., Lincoln, M., & McCabe, P. (2010). Older people who stutter: Barriers to communication and perceptions of treatment needs. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders,45(1), 15–30.
Blomgren, M. (2013). Behavioral treatments for children and adults who stutter: A review. Psychology Research and Behavior Management,6, 9–19.
Bloodstein, O., & Bernstein-Ratner, N. (2008). A handbook on stuttering (6th ed.). New York: Thomson-Delmar.
Drew, P. (1997). ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of trouble in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics,28, 69–101.
Engelke, C. R., & Higginbotham, D. J. (2013). Looking to speak: On the temporality of misalignment in interaction involving an augmented communicator using eye-gaze technology. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders,4(1), 95–122.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Guitar, B. (2013). Stuttering: An integrated approach to its nature and treatment (4th ed.). Baltimore: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
James, S., Brumfitt, S., & Cudd, P. (1999). Communicating by telephone: Views of people with a stuttering impairment. Journal of Fluency Disorders,22, 232–326.
Jefferson, G. (1983). Notes on some orderliness of overlap onset. Tilburg Papers in Language and Literature,28(1), 1–28.
Jefferson, G. (1989). Preliminary notes on a possible metric which provides for a “standard maximum” silence of approximately one second in conversation. In D. Roger & P. Bull (Eds.), Conversation: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 166–196). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lerner, G. (1996). On the ‘semi-permeable’ character of grammatical units in conversation: conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 238–276). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lind, M., & Sønsterud, H. (2014). Co-construction of turns at talk: Active listening or disruptions in conversation with persons who stutter? Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders,5(2), 141–166.
Robinson, J. D. (2006). Managing trouble responsibility and relationships during conversational repair. Communication Monographs, 73, 137–161.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language,50(4), 696–735.
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givon (Ed.), Syntax and semantics 12: discourse and syntax (pp. 261–288). New York: Academic Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (2000). When ‘others’ initiate repair. Applied Linguistics,21, 205–243.
Schegloff, E. A. (2002). Opening sequences. In J. E. Katz & M. A. Aakhus (Eds.), Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance (pp. 326–385). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence organization in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair for conversation. Language, 53, 361–382.
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica,8, 289–327.
Tetnowski, J. A., & Damico, J. S. (2001). A demonstration of the advantages of qualitative methodologies in stuttering research. Journal of Fluency Disorders,26, 1–26.
Wilkinson, R. (2019). Atypical interaction: Conversation analysis and communicative impairments. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 52, 281–299.
Yairi, E., & Ambrose, N. (1999). Early childhood stuttering I: Persistency and recovery rates. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research,42, 1097–1112.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wilkinson, R., Morris, S. (2020). ‘My Own Space in This World’: Stammering, Telephone Calls, and the Progressivity and Permeability of Turns-at-Talk. In: Wilkinson, R., Rae, J.P., Rasmussen, G. (eds) Atypical Interaction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28799-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28799-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28798-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28799-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)