When engaged in singing, chanting, or speaking or reading in unison with another person, a person who stutters usually will not stutter

From time to time, I’ve written at this website about stuttering. As a volunteer, I was responsible for media relations during the early years of the Canadian Stuttering Association, which I co-founded. I’m a co-founder, as well, of the Estonian Stuttering Association and the International Stuttering Association.

A previous post is entitled:

The link between Charles Darwin and stuttering

Although we can’t generalize much from individual cases, it can be useful to know of individual journeys. In my own case, I’ve travelled across the full spectrum of stuttering – from occasions years ago when I literally could not get out a single word, to a situation over the past four decades where, in the vast majority of occasions and without a lot of effort, I have come across as a normally fluent speaker. A post of some time back outlines the latter scenario:

Stuttering, as viewed from the vantage point of a person who stutters who usually functions as a normally fluent speaker

Marching and chanting at a postwar school in Montreal

My own impressions and remembrances about stuttering go back to a class, I think in grade two, at a school in Montreal not long after the end of the Second World War. Along with another student, once a week or so, I am taken out of class, which makes me feel singled out. The reason we are singled out becomes clear when it dawns on me there is some concern about the way we speak. We arrive at a small, cheerfully decorated room, where a therapist commands us to march back and forth, in step, side by side. The therapist, who appears to have a concern for our well-being, directs us to repeat a simple children’s chant, in unison, as we march along. Our movements and actions are, in this way, carefully synchronized.

I do not know what the rationale for the marching may have been. Possibly, marching served as a framework for the chanting, the words of which we were taught to repeat. It occurs to me that chanting while marching would be more appealing to students in the primary grades, than chanting while sitting in place, immobilized inside a small therapy room.

We can also picture a possible rationale for the chanting. When a person who stutters engages in singing, they can usually sing fluently. A person is not going to stutter, as a rule, while they are singing. Chanting is very similar. A person is not going to stutter when they chant. When the singing or chanting stops, however, a stutterer will resume their stuttering.

We may also note that in these marching sessions, the two young students, each one a stutterer, are chanting in unison. It’s long been known that when two stutterers read out loud in unison, even if each is reading from a different text, they will not stutter. This may be the rationale for having two students attend the therapy sessions together, under conditions where they can chant in unison, rather than turning up for speech therapy one at a time. The key point, however, is that the stuttering resumes, as soon as the choral reading or choral chanting ends.

To sum up, our speech therapy sessions in grade two lead to no change. We continue to stutter. That said, it has been worth a try. From every attempt at addressing the issue of stuttering, something of value can be learned.

Einer Boberg’s wedding vows

I am writing a biography of Einer Boberg (1935-1995). The text that follows, along with other content at the current post, is from the draft of a Prologue for the biography.

In looking back at my grade two class, and the practice of chanting in unison, I am reminded of what an Anglican vicar had learned over the years, in London, England, about how to keep things running smoothly during a marriage ceremony, in which one of the participants is a person who stutters.

The story I have in mind, which in this case concerns the practice of speaking in unison, is about Einer Boberg, a young violin student who happened to meet a young woman, a recent graduate of Oxford University, Julia Sluce, when they were both living in Vienna, Austria, in 1960. The young couple became engaged and began to make preparations for their wedding, which would take place in London.

At that time, Boberg stuttered severely; he was essentially mute: unable, much of the time, once he arrived in London from Vienna, to get out any words at all. He was very concerned that, when he had to say his marriage vows, he would – literally, in his case, not figuratively – be at a loss for words. Given such a state of affairs, how could the wedding ceremony possibly proceed? Fortunately, the Anglican cleric officiating at the wedding had learned of a method that would enable stutterers to achieve fluency during a wedding ceremony. The vicar had learned that if he spoke in unison – that is, engaged in choral speaking – with a stutterer during the ceremony, the words would be spoken fluently.

The wedding vows thereupon went forward smoothly, without a hitch, at the wedding in question as had been predicted. The vicar and the groom spoke in unison, at the start of Boberg’s vows, after which the vicar stopped his quiet, in-unison voicing of the words and Boberg, now speaking on his own, delivered the rest of the vows fluently. Attendees at the event were stunned, Julia (Sluce) Boberg reported later. Many of the assembled guests had never, until that moment, witnessed Einer Boberg speaking fluently.

Stuttering concealment

In dealing with stuttering, certain strategies may be adopted by people who stutter with the aim of diminishing the pain associated with listener responses, when speaking with normally fluent speakers. In my own case, I began to stutter at the age of six, my mother once told me. In response, I adopted several strategies aimed at addressing my stuttering.

Sometimes, I would choose to substitute what I sensed would be an easier word to say, in place of a difficult word. The drawback is that if you substitute words in this way, you may end up speaking in circles; may lose the power of direct speech; and may say things that do not make a lot of sense. I also adopted a policy of not saying much of anything including on occasions when, otherwise, I would have freely expressed my thoughts and feelings. As well, I began to avoid some speaking situations altogether. Such strategies tend to remove a person from the mainstream of life.

That said, we may note that vast generalizations are not helpful, regarding such strategies. In some, but by no means all regions of the world, if you are a stutterer who works as a teacher, for example, stuttering concealment may be an unofficial part of your job description. That’s because, in some but not all parts of the world, if a school official becomes aware you are a person who stutters, it’s possible you may be out of a job.

Stuttering as expression of neurodiversity

Not all stutterers choose attempts at stuttering concealment. Some will opt, instead, to stutter openly, in every speaking situation they encounter. Stutterers who adopt such a public-facing stance may, in addition, purposefully seek to position stuttering as an everyday, alternative mode of speech production, an everyday expression of neurodiversity. Such a strategy promises to lead to productive outcomes – which would, however, be easier to achieve for some people who stutter and more difficult for others.

People who stutter mildly or moderately may find it easier to adopt a stance of open stuttering, it occurs to me, than may be the case for people who stutter severely: who have difficulty in getting out any words at all. For many years, alongside occasional, fleeting moments of fluency, I was in the latter category myself, as was Einer Boberg, at various times in his early years.