well I’ve um stammered since the age of
three and normally when I’m faced with
an audience of more than 100 people the
statistics tell me that at least one
person will also have a stammer as well
so I know that I’m probably in very good
company today some years ago I was lucky
enough to speak at the Michael Palin
Center in Clerkenwell
in London it’s a fantastic charity and
fairly unique in its specific focus in
the provision of speech therapy for
children who stammer children come into
it from all over the country such as the
shortage of this service as I got the
end of my talk somebody asked me so what
words of encouragement would you give to
the ten-year-old you and I stood there
and I thought about myself as a 10 year
old in the mid 80s and I had to say
there’s really not a lot of
encouragement that I can give that
ten-year-old I’m afraid because when I
thought about it what I could remember
about stammering from earliest childhood
was adults giving me endless words of
advice on how to be fluent think about
your words try a different word really
think about what you’re saying take a
deep breath stay calm all well-meant but
none of it actually helping me or
showing any real understanding about
stammering when I went off to boarding
school aged 8 I suddenly realized that I
was faced with a wall of staff who knew
nothing about stammering and you nothing
about the psychological pressures that I
was under in the classroom as
increasingly I was expected to speak
aloud in class read out of books
contribute to debates on topics
sometimes worst of all having to read
the lesson in Chapel and it left me with
some really scarring and embarrassing
times that stick with me to this day but
the most stressful time of all was after
graduating and trying to get into
graduate type employment and I faced
some real horrendous interviews
competing against a lot of other young
people with the same qualifications but
fluent speech there were even interviews
where I was told in the middle of the
interview that I would be unsuitable for
that job and when I compared my
experiences with those
of other adults who stammer and I speak
to a lot of other adults who stammer
these days we discover that our
experiences through childhood through
school trying to get into employment and
progressing through employment are
remarkably similar it’s as if it seems
to me society and its institutions and
its systems conspire to marginalize
people who stammer and make life awkward
for them so my talk today is aimed at
shifting attitudes societal attitudes
towards stammering yes it is about
greater tolerance for stammering but
it’s also about acceptance and I don’t
mean acceptance for stammering on the
fringes I mean acceptance for stammering
at the forefront of society at the sharp
edge of broadcasting of politics and of
corporate life this is not gonna be an
easy thing to achieve because stammering
and the stigma of stammering go a long
way back into history we know that
stammering is referenced in an ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics we know that the
great Greek orator demosthenes was
laughed out of the Parliament in Athens
in around 350 BC for stammering during a
debate on financing of the Navy we know
that the Emperor Claudius was derided
and berated by his own family and told
he would never make it in public life
how wrong they were in the Middle Ages
people were burnt alive for stammering
suspected of involvement in witchcraft
and in Satanism in the 17th and 18th
century in the improvised Italian
theater the commedia dell’arte there was
always a character called Tartaglia who
had a stammer to make the audience laugh
we saw in that great film The King’s
Speech the pressures that King George
was put on there and put himself under
to achieve fluency in his radio
broadcasts what does that tell you about
the stigma of stammering in the 30s and
in the present day in 2011 when Ed Balls
as Shadow Chancellor got up to respond
to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement and
stammered on a few words the
action he got in the chamber of the
Commons was one of ridicule and laughter
from the moth from demosthenes in 350 BC
to Ed Balls in 2011 what had changed in
terms of parliamentary attitudes towards
stammering and through the centuries
theories as to the cause of stammering
have evolved in the most chaotic way in
the 18th century they believed that it
was surgical surgeons were hacking away
at the tongues of people who stammered
to no effect in the 19th century this
move towards a belief that stammering
was a mechanical issue that people had
developed faulty ways of speaking
elocutionist piled in and tried to teach
them the correct way of speaking
in 1915 Sigmund Freud did what Sigmund
Freud did and declared stammering to be
an oedipal trait he quickly backtracked
from this view but even today the
followers of Freud continued to insist
on this theory in the late 1920s at the
University of Iowa there was a brief
moment where they thought it might be a
neurological issue but in the absence of
the right technology to prove it this
moved into a belief that stammering was
a behavioral issue that people were
avoiding situations and words and that
this had a worsening effect on their
speech and that shaped speech therapy
for the rest of the 20th century it’s
only fairly recently that magnetic
resonance imaging has become
sufficiently sophisticated to show very
slight differences in the white matter
pathways linking up the zones of brains
in the in the brains of people who
stammer and today there’s a pretty good
consensus across the neuro scientific
community that stammering is rooted in
the neurological wiring that ensures a
basic level of disfluency but the real
problem is how people react to their own
stammer and that is as a result of
social conditioning and attitudes
the other challenge towards bringing
about a shift in attitudes is that the
very people who we would want to be on
the forefront of campaigning and talking
up at X
opportunities like this one today are
people who stammer and they of course
have been led to believe from the
earliest age that stammering is
something that should be hidden and it
has a real impact on the lives of people
who stammer these negative attitudes the
British Psychological Society finds that
more than eighty percent of children who
stammer are subjected to bullying in one
form or other
the British prison population has more
than 60% of them with unsupported speech
and language needs with stammering
prominent amongst them in employment we
know that people have a real struggle in
getting into careers and in progressing
and there’s been a lot of research to
support this lately a study carried out
by the University of Newcastle funded by
the Dominic Barker trust that was set up
by the family of a young man who
tragically took his own life at the age
of 26 in the mid 90s after five years of
repeated rejection at interview an
absolute tragedy and it will not
surprise you to hear that there are
well-known links between stammering and
the knock-on effects on mental health
but let’s just take a backtrack from the
step step back from these practical
considerations and just think about the
miracle of the voice and human speech it
is an extraordinarily sophisticated
faculty our most sophisticated faculty
if only that speech and language are
really two separate neural loops of
activity they’re linked of course but
language can be channeled into sign
language or handwriting or word
processing each with its own form of
syntax that on its own is incredible but
where the choice is made to channel it
into speech you’re listening to what
people are saying you’re hearing their
words you’re analyzing how they’re
talking the speed you’ll adapt in your
own speech somebody walks into the room
that again has an impact on how you
speak and all this is borne out in
electrical signaling around
zones of the brain the shift in nuance
and pitch and pace you’re thinking about
your words you’re switching them it is
truly remarkable and we should not take
it for granted so with that in mind when
you think about a young person like
Dominic Barker with his life and his
career in front of him rejected at
interview for jobs after graduating is
it not just a little bit complacent a
little bit naive a little bit arrogant a
little bit ignorant to reject anybody on
the basis of differences in how they
speak we should be in awe and grateful
of the miracle of human speech and we
should never ever discriminate against
anybody we should never discriminate
against anybody in terms of how they
speak and differences in their speech so
that is why I want to shift attitudes
towards us towards stammering and what
does this mean in practical terms
I want in schools and education
stammering to feature alongside autism
and Asperger’s and dyslexia in teacher
training so that every single teacher
understands stammering understands what
children who stammer are going through
and understands the basic elements of
how they can be supported I want the
government to stop hacking away at
speech and language therapy funding and
considerate and investment so that we
have speech therapists all over the
country who can come into schools and
talk to teachers have a dialogue that’s
what I want for children in employment
we have a great little organization
called the employers stammering Network
linked to the British stammering
Association it’s early days they’ve got
a number of big corporate subscribers
they’re starting to develop good
practice in terms of supporting people
who stammer and giving employees who
stammer confidence but the government
should consider organisations like this
as an investment opportunity when you
consider the costs of people not being
able to get into employment
thirdly in broadcasting when you listen
to the television and radio you will
hear a diet of beautifully silky
polished fluent speech how much does
that to it how much is that doing to
attune your understanding of what to
expect when some when someone speaks
when I TV earlier this year ran their
great documentary ITV school for
stammerers it was presented by somebody
with a fluent voice and it showed
stammering in terms of people on some
golden journey to fluency
I would like broadcasting both to allow
people who stammer to present on the
front line but also to represent
stammering as a way of speaking not
routinely displaying it in terms of a
journey towards fluency through speech
therapy so that is what I want to change
in terms of social attitudes and if I
can devote a small part or perhaps not
so small part of my life towards making
that happen then I will surely die a
proud man in this second half of my life
and if there’s anybody else in the
audience today who stammers or who cares
about this or who has a child who
stammers I would urge you to join me on
this movement join the British
stammering Association and let’s make
this change in our lifetimes I think we
must do it I think we should do it and I
think we can do it because we have a voice thank you
three and normally when I’m faced with
an audience of more than 100 people the
statistics tell me that at least one
person will also have a stammer as well
so I know that I’m probably in very good
company today some years ago I was lucky
enough to speak at the Michael Palin
Center in Clerkenwell
in London it’s a fantastic charity and
fairly unique in its specific focus in
the provision of speech therapy for
children who stammer children come into
it from all over the country such as the
shortage of this service as I got the
end of my talk somebody asked me so what
words of encouragement would you give to
the ten-year-old you and I stood there
and I thought about myself as a 10 year
old in the mid 80s and I had to say
there’s really not a lot of
encouragement that I can give that
ten-year-old I’m afraid because when I
thought about it what I could remember
about stammering from earliest childhood
was adults giving me endless words of
advice on how to be fluent think about
your words try a different word really
think about what you’re saying take a
deep breath stay calm all well-meant but
none of it actually helping me or
showing any real understanding about
stammering when I went off to boarding
school aged 8 I suddenly realized that I
was faced with a wall of staff who knew
nothing about stammering and you nothing
about the psychological pressures that I
was under in the classroom as
increasingly I was expected to speak
aloud in class read out of books
contribute to debates on topics
sometimes worst of all having to read
the lesson in Chapel and it left me with
some really scarring and embarrassing
times that stick with me to this day but
the most stressful time of all was after
graduating and trying to get into
graduate type employment and I faced
some real horrendous interviews
competing against a lot of other young
people with the same qualifications but
fluent speech there were even interviews
where I was told in the middle of the
interview that I would be unsuitable for
that job and when I compared my
experiences with those
of other adults who stammer and I speak
to a lot of other adults who stammer
these days we discover that our
experiences through childhood through
school trying to get into employment and
progressing through employment are
remarkably similar it’s as if it seems
to me society and its institutions and
its systems conspire to marginalize
people who stammer and make life awkward
for them so my talk today is aimed at
shifting attitudes societal attitudes
towards stammering yes it is about
greater tolerance for stammering but
it’s also about acceptance and I don’t
mean acceptance for stammering on the
fringes I mean acceptance for stammering
at the forefront of society at the sharp
edge of broadcasting of politics and of
corporate life this is not gonna be an
easy thing to achieve because stammering
and the stigma of stammering go a long
way back into history we know that
stammering is referenced in an ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics we know that the
great Greek orator demosthenes was
laughed out of the Parliament in Athens
in around 350 BC for stammering during a
debate on financing of the Navy we know
that the Emperor Claudius was derided
and berated by his own family and told
he would never make it in public life
how wrong they were in the Middle Ages
people were burnt alive for stammering
suspected of involvement in witchcraft
and in Satanism in the 17th and 18th
century in the improvised Italian
theater the commedia dell’arte there was
always a character called Tartaglia who
had a stammer to make the audience laugh
we saw in that great film The King’s
Speech the pressures that King George
was put on there and put himself under
to achieve fluency in his radio
broadcasts what does that tell you about
the stigma of stammering in the 30s and
in the present day in 2011 when Ed Balls
as Shadow Chancellor got up to respond
to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement and
stammered on a few words the
action he got in the chamber of the
Commons was one of ridicule and laughter
from the moth from demosthenes in 350 BC
to Ed Balls in 2011 what had changed in
terms of parliamentary attitudes towards
stammering and through the centuries
theories as to the cause of stammering
have evolved in the most chaotic way in
the 18th century they believed that it
was surgical surgeons were hacking away
at the tongues of people who stammered
to no effect in the 19th century this
move towards a belief that stammering
was a mechanical issue that people had
developed faulty ways of speaking
elocutionist piled in and tried to teach
them the correct way of speaking
in 1915 Sigmund Freud did what Sigmund
Freud did and declared stammering to be
an oedipal trait he quickly backtracked
from this view but even today the
followers of Freud continued to insist
on this theory in the late 1920s at the
University of Iowa there was a brief
moment where they thought it might be a
neurological issue but in the absence of
the right technology to prove it this
moved into a belief that stammering was
a behavioral issue that people were
avoiding situations and words and that
this had a worsening effect on their
speech and that shaped speech therapy
for the rest of the 20th century it’s
only fairly recently that magnetic
resonance imaging has become
sufficiently sophisticated to show very
slight differences in the white matter
pathways linking up the zones of brains
in the in the brains of people who
stammer and today there’s a pretty good
consensus across the neuro scientific
community that stammering is rooted in
the neurological wiring that ensures a
basic level of disfluency but the real
problem is how people react to their own
stammer and that is as a result of
social conditioning and attitudes
the other challenge towards bringing
about a shift in attitudes is that the
very people who we would want to be on
the forefront of campaigning and talking
up at X
opportunities like this one today are
people who stammer and they of course
have been led to believe from the
earliest age that stammering is
something that should be hidden and it
has a real impact on the lives of people
who stammer these negative attitudes the
British Psychological Society finds that
more than eighty percent of children who
stammer are subjected to bullying in one
form or other
the British prison population has more
than 60% of them with unsupported speech
and language needs with stammering
prominent amongst them in employment we
know that people have a real struggle in
getting into careers and in progressing
and there’s been a lot of research to
support this lately a study carried out
by the University of Newcastle funded by
the Dominic Barker trust that was set up
by the family of a young man who
tragically took his own life at the age
of 26 in the mid 90s after five years of
repeated rejection at interview an
absolute tragedy and it will not
surprise you to hear that there are
well-known links between stammering and
the knock-on effects on mental health
but let’s just take a backtrack from the
step step back from these practical
considerations and just think about the
miracle of the voice and human speech it
is an extraordinarily sophisticated
faculty our most sophisticated faculty
if only that speech and language are
really two separate neural loops of
activity they’re linked of course but
language can be channeled into sign
language or handwriting or word
processing each with its own form of
syntax that on its own is incredible but
where the choice is made to channel it
into speech you’re listening to what
people are saying you’re hearing their
words you’re analyzing how they’re
talking the speed you’ll adapt in your
own speech somebody walks into the room
that again has an impact on how you
speak and all this is borne out in
electrical signaling around
zones of the brain the shift in nuance
and pitch and pace you’re thinking about
your words you’re switching them it is
truly remarkable and we should not take
it for granted so with that in mind when
you think about a young person like
Dominic Barker with his life and his
career in front of him rejected at
interview for jobs after graduating is
it not just a little bit complacent a
little bit naive a little bit arrogant a
little bit ignorant to reject anybody on
the basis of differences in how they
speak we should be in awe and grateful
of the miracle of human speech and we
should never ever discriminate against
anybody we should never discriminate
against anybody in terms of how they
speak and differences in their speech so
that is why I want to shift attitudes
towards us towards stammering and what
does this mean in practical terms
I want in schools and education
stammering to feature alongside autism
and Asperger’s and dyslexia in teacher
training so that every single teacher
understands stammering understands what
children who stammer are going through
and understands the basic elements of
how they can be supported I want the
government to stop hacking away at
speech and language therapy funding and
considerate and investment so that we
have speech therapists all over the
country who can come into schools and
talk to teachers have a dialogue that’s
what I want for children in employment
we have a great little organization
called the employers stammering Network
linked to the British stammering
Association it’s early days they’ve got
a number of big corporate subscribers
they’re starting to develop good
practice in terms of supporting people
who stammer and giving employees who
stammer confidence but the government
should consider organisations like this
as an investment opportunity when you
consider the costs of people not being
able to get into employment
thirdly in broadcasting when you listen
to the television and radio you will
hear a diet of beautifully silky
polished fluent speech how much does
that to it how much is that doing to
attune your understanding of what to
expect when some when someone speaks
when I TV earlier this year ran their
great documentary ITV school for
stammerers it was presented by somebody
with a fluent voice and it showed
stammering in terms of people on some
golden journey to fluency
I would like broadcasting both to allow
people who stammer to present on the
front line but also to represent
stammering as a way of speaking not
routinely displaying it in terms of a
journey towards fluency through speech
therapy so that is what I want to change
in terms of social attitudes and if I
can devote a small part or perhaps not
so small part of my life towards making
that happen then I will surely die a
proud man in this second half of my life
and if there’s anybody else in the
audience today who stammers or who cares
about this or who has a child who
stammers I would urge you to join me on
this movement join the British
stammering Association and let’s make
this change in our lifetimes I think we
must do it I think we should do it and I
think we can do it because we have a voice thank you
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