Communication
Stuttering, or disfluency in general, may be described as a breakdown in communication. Specifically, a breakdown in verbal communication. When a person stutters, the listener may have difficulty in understanding what they are saying, especially if the eventual speech is disjointed or not fully formed. When the stutterer substitutes or avoids words, they are often degrading the content and quality of their verbal communication, sometimes to an extent that what comes across in verbal communication is quite different from the stutterer actually wants to say. When a stutterer blocks, they may never get to issue verbal communication at all, especially if the listener is impatient and just not give the stutterer the opportunity to enunciate, or fails to realise that the stutterer is trying to say anything at all.
Communication breakdown can be the bane of the stutterers life, especially when allied to avoidance. The stutterer often loses confidence to communicate per se. Verbal communication can often degenerate to a purely functional level, where the minimum that need to be said is in fact said. The stutterer enters into a conversation with his or her eyes immediately looking for an exit. This can often be sensed by the listener who will facilitate the termination of the conversation. Seen in a purely economic sense where every word can have its price, the stutterer will often try to ensure his or her expenditure on discourse is as frugal as possible given its relative cost. In contrast, a fluent speaker will recognise no such cost to discourse and indeed engage in what seems to the stutterer to be extravagent verbose conversations seemingly without a care.
Types of Communication
Mehrabain and Ferris (1967) claim that only 7% of the content of communication can be attributed to content, i,e. the words actually enunciated. The remaining 93% can be accounted for by tonality and body langauge. This should be very encouraging to the stutterer, only 7% of their communication will be affected by their disfluency. Unfortunately, this is not quite what really happens as the symptoms of the stutterer will more than likely affect the other 93% bringing the quality of the communication down much lower than the aspirational 93% for the optimistic stutterer. However, there is hope for the stutterer who is willing to be honest with themself and to work on their therapy.
A useful exercise can be to undertake a communication audit on yourself, and even better in collaboration with a trusted friend, relative or partner. Such an audit documents the complete range of symptons which seem to be related to the stutter, whether this be avoiding eye contact, bad posture, blushing, etc. It may then be possible, even if you can't deal specifically with the disfluency itself, to deal with the secondary symptoms such as tics, etc, and develop what the NLPers call a better rapport with the listener. For example, if you recognise a symptoms of a facial tic when trying to force out a word on a severe block, and recognise that the jerking of the head is not helping you to enunciate (and even if it is, its overall negative effect on communication supercedes any relative increase in fluency), and then try to consciously remove this secondary symptom as its occurs. You may still be blocking, but at least you are not degrading the rapport with your listener, thus your level of communication will be higher, though not on a verbal level. A knowing smile may even be useful to retain an overall flow of communciation. Though, this may seem pretty simple on paper, it is of course very difficult in practice, especially in a context of relative panic. It may be easier when the listener knows that you have a stutter, where the listener doesn't know this, the stutterer may exacerbate his or her fear within the situation if they feel that they are being judged, possibly as subnormal.
However, the stutterer should also recognise that most people are not exceptional communicators. While their speech may be by-and-large fluent, a lot of people will still occasionally stumble on words or mispronounce them. They may also have a poor command of the language they are speaking in. By working on those parts of communication which the stutterer can control, it may even be possible to increase their quality of communication over many so called fluent speakers, especially if disfluency is on the lower end of the scale. For example, eye contact, for which there can be no neurologic or physiological basis for avoiding, may be used to increase the rapport the stutterer has with his or her listeners; while this may not bring the level the communication (or rapport) to a level of a fluent speaker, it may make a significant difference. Once the stutterer has developed this element of communication, he or she may choose to work on another symptom such as say a strange foot tapping. Therefore, although likely dealt with in the context concurrent work on the disfluency condition, the stutterer can increase their quality of communication independent of any progress on their disfluency.
One of the problems the long-time stutterer may experience to a greater or lesser extent is their ability in what some, referencing Oscar Wilde, have dubbed the art of conversation. The stutterer may become so anxious when engaged in a conversation that they devote all their resources to avoiding disfluency and/or terminating the conversation as a disagreeable situation. In such scenarios, so much of the stutterer's consciousness and energy is devoted to their fluency and to such a focussed myopic level that they may lose relative consciousness of other attributes of their situation, even to the extent that they may lose some of their co-ordination and become more clumsy than they usually are. Another symptom can be that the conversation becomes flagged a danger and is dealt with in this manner. Uncomfortable silences are dealt with glib cliches, comments about the weather, etc., for which the stutterer may rarely have fluency problems, and which the verbally territory is quite tightly defined and predictable.
It is probably very important to develop self confidence in conversational skills, especially in the context of avoidence which is the overriding nemesis. The stutterer often avoids small-talk, as when taken on an economic basis, they may feel the value of such communication is superseded by its potential cost in terms of disfluency. It is very easy to take an intellectual stand on such matters and see yourself as above such meaningless discourse. However, small talk can have a very important contribution to overall communication and developing a rapport with those you are trying to communicate with. This is not to say that the stutterer should dumb-down and spend all their day in meaningless discourse about what they consider unimportant. However, they should recognise that small-talk can have an important role to play in the communication relationship, and that the value they may have attributed to it in their economic judgement may be grossly undervalued.
A lack of conversation skills is not solely confined to those who may stutter or experience disfluency. Fluent speakers may often find it hard to initiate and sustain conversations, due to shyness, fear of ridicule, etc. However, they don't have to deal with a condition of disfluency so their position is much less problematic. The stutterer may also suffer some of the fears of the fluent speaker, though they are likely to be influenced and potentially exacerbated by their disfluency. Again, the stutterer can try to work on the other non-fluency related influences and potentially become less socially awkward that their fluent compatriot.
Due to avoidence, the stutterer may have allowed their communication skills, and specifically their verbal communication skills, to atropy. Therefore, it is likely to be of therapeutic value to develop their skills through as much practice as possible. This of course is going to be extremely difficulty in the context of continued disfluency. However, if the secondary symptoms are tackled first to improve overall communication, it may become easier to tackle the disfluency later on, especially if the confidence as a communicator has been lifted.
Recognising all the different aspects that make up communication should be of value to the stutterer. The next time the stutterer blocks on a word and tries to force it out to return to disfluency they should recognise that their verbal disfluency is only one part of the equation. Rather than focusing specifically on their verbal disfluency, they should recognise that other symptoms, such as tics, may be more distressing to the listener than their disjointed speech. By moving their perception to a wider picture of their circumstances, they may be able to act more rationally and this may make dealing with the symptoms of disfluency much more effective.
By devoting all their consciousness to their fluency, the stutterer is often unable to think through what they need to say, and often blurt out safe dialogue to alleviate the situation. By extending the focus of their consciousness, they may to be able to devote more of their resources to considering what they want to say rather than ensuring that it is vocalised fluently. This should increase the quality of their communication, and thus their self confidence in their ability to speak