The new film “The King’s Speech” centers on King George VI’s struggle to get his stuttered speech into shape for a crucial radio address to the British people on the eve of World War II.

Some 100,000 Michigan residents – 3 million people nationally – stutter, including The Rossman Group Vice President Sharon Emery. In the following essay, which Sharon adapted from a column she originally wrote for the Grand Rapids Press, she looks to help fluent speakers compensate for their listening disability when dealing with people who stutter.

When it comes to stuttering, the world needs to get over it.

Certainly most of us stutterers can’t, given the lack of a cure – a term that makes those of us who don’t feel particularly afflicted cringe.

So what to do about halting speakers in a world dominated by the glib?

How about turning back the fluency rate to slow-mo and trying to enjoy it?

I know you can’t; it’s hard. But consider this: Like many disabilities, stuttering is in the eye, or ear, of the beholder. If the culture said it was OK to take three seconds to make a sound that takes most speakers one second to utter, would stuttering be a disabling condition? I don’t think so.

Stuttering does not threaten my health or life. Only in the social context does it threaten me – when it limits my personal and professional opportunities. None of those is a function of the condition itself, but of society’s reaction to it.

The attitude of stutterers should be: “Hey, this is my accent, this is the way I talk. The problem isn’t that I can’t talk fluently, but that you can’t listen patiently.”
So the listener becomes the person with the disability, and the stutterer’s job is to educate them, thereby making them less disabled. Someone’s got to do it.

The disabled listener is our special charge. Stuttering threatens observers because they can so totally relate – everyone has stuttered. And it’s never been pretty. Flubbing a speech, freezing when asked a question – they’re all in that special category of little nightmares no one wants to experience but everyone invariably does.

When the fluent speaker meets the stutterer, the fear factor goes off the charts. Unless they’re really acting like jerks – like laughing and asking, “Are you sure?” when the stutterer gives a halting answer – you have to feel sorry for them.

Often the unease is written all over their faces. Because stutterers usually don’t give any outward indication that they’re about to inflict discomfort, they often catch disabled listeners off-guard. There’s no wheelchair or physical characteristics to serve as a red flag.

Listeners get hit by that staccato speech and painful grimaces erupt; they can’t help it. But the experience provides the stutterer with a wealth of information about the listener. It’s a powerful litmus test for the listener’s ability to abide “The Other” – someone unlike them.

Then there’s the “cure thyself” expectation. No one expects a wheelchair user to get up and walk. No one expects a blind person to start reading sports agate in the newspaper.

But stuttering? You’d be amazed how many listeners imply you’re just not trying hard enough or not trying the right thing – relax, slow down, take it easy. Gee, thanks, we never thought of that.

Just the other day, I stuttered in mid-sentence while talking to a salesperson who used the downtime to get in a few words of advice from his pet-rearing experience: “Come on, you can do it!” he said encouragingly.

I had to stifle what I’m sure was going to be a perfectly fluent bark.

I have stuttered as long as I can remember and have been through all the usual speech therapies, in school and in private settings. Not to mention relaxation therapy, psychotherapy, delayed auditory feedback, etc. I think it all helped to some extent. But bottom line, I still stutter – which is why listeners need to get over it, because it doesn’t appear I will.

I always planned on getting over it, but I never consciously adjusted my aspirations to accommodate stuttering. So my decision to become a reporter – and now, a communications consultant – was pretty much a no-brainer. Keeping quiet, or at least laying low, wasn’t an option. Not making my voice heard was simply more painful than enduring the physical and emotional toll of speaking.

I have pretty much always been guided by the unfailing belief that I had something important to say and the world should listen. Not that I haven’t been continually tested in that resolve. Rejections, disappointments and cruelties accumulate – they beat you up, they beat you down. But they don’t win. They … don’t … win.

Say it loud, say it slow.

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Contact: Sharon Emery, The Rossman Group – 517-487-9320