Introduction & Justification
Stuttering affects more than 15 million Americans. People who stutter (PWS) suffer in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labels as social environment: the immediate physical surroundings, social relationships, and cultural milieus.2 In fact, while 39% of PWS believe they have experienced discrimination in the job hiring process, 80% of employers admit they will not hire them. 74% have been bullied and 94% have low self-esteem. With regard to intellectual skills, research shows that fluent children do not want to work with those who stutter.1 In addition, there are many myths that surround PWS, including that they are stupid, they are only nervous, or that stuttering can be "caught" through imitation.3 These stigma have detrimental effects on PWS. I have been wrestling with stuttering for 23 years. Design allows me to communicate with people in a way that is otherwise difficult to do. My disfluency began in the 1st grade during story time when my teacher asked me to read a page from The Very Hungry Caterpillar out loud. After I finished reading, I looked up to see my classmates laughing and mockingly whispering: "ca-ca-ca-ca-terpillar." Since then, I have witnessed the physical and social effects that this disorder has had on me and others — marginalization and physical, social, and mental punishment. This is why I have set out to increase awareness about stuttering. The lack of awareness about these ways of speaking has led to prejudice, stigma, and a strong bias toward corrective, "normalizing" speech therapies. Stuttering, like most speech disorders, must be corrected, overcome, and erased. As a person diagnosed with stuttering, my thesis project contends with this narrative of overcoming. Using motion graphics, photography and 3-D typography, my project presents stuttering as a visual, linguistic, and physical space that is rich with poesis and strife, materiality and meaning.
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1 Furnham, Adrian, and Stephen Davis. Involvement of Social Factors in Stuttering: A Review and Assessment of Current Methodology. Stammering research: an on-line journal published by the British Stammering Association. U.S. National Library of Medicine, July 1, 2004. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC2231609/. 2 Barnett, E, and M Casper. A Definition of Social Environment. American journal of public health. U.S. National Library of Medicine, March 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC1446600/pdf/11249033.pdf. 3 5 Myths about Stuttering: Awareness Week Seeks to Set the Record Straight. Stuttering Foundation: A Nonprofit Organization Helping Those Who Stutter. Accessed September 9, 2019. https://www.stutteringhelp.org/content/5myths-about-stuttering-awareness-weekseeks-set-record-straight.
