Media’s misperception of stuttering
#25
Ahhhh, here’s a gem! An interview with a stutterer who describes our challenges to a tee. From a 2006 episode of the Citizen Shift podcast, John Paskievich is interviewed about why society’s perception of stuttering need to change. Hear! Hear! In particular, the media. Hear! Hear!
John is a documentary filmmaker who made a film, called Unspeakable, about the media’s prejudice towards stuttered speech. In this interview, you will hear the struggles he encountered while trying to pitch his film to the media.
In this podcast, you’ll hear how during a television interview, the host couldn’t get past John’s stuttering and asked him to do take after take. John asks why there is such a stigma towards stuttering on tv. There are people with all kinds of accents, people in wheelchairs, obese people… Through pondering a stutter-friendly world, John talks about how disclosing your stuttering makes everyone relaxed.
John also describes how stuttering robs a student of a positive experience of what school is all about, expressing your ideas and having fun, learning what they want to learn, making friends with the people they’d like to make friends with, the ignorance…
Sounds like a great film. I’m ordering my copy!
One Response to “Media’s misperception of stuttering”
Participate!
This is an open-mic podcast. I encourage you to record some audio of yourself and email it to me at coolstutter@gmail.com.
I'll play it on my next episode!
This way, we all hear each other stutter and feel less alone with our speech impediment!
Join the Facebook page and chat with me on Twitter — I'm @stutterdude.
I really like the documentary for its clear and uncompromising view on what it can be like to be a person who stutters. A powerful movie to share our experiences and feelings with the general public. However, when Unspeakable deals with causes of stuttering, he is adding ketchup to a chocolate cake. He puts forward his own opinion indirectly by interviewing Darrell Dodge on the causes of stuttering who is absolutely not representative of the research community, in fact he is not even part of the research community. Moreover, Dodge’s theory of “stuttering as a self-inflicted disorder of speech, communication, and awareness” is not supported by evidence, but in fact I would argue that latest genetics research contradicts it. But, I have to be fair and say that I agree with many individual statements / insights on his website, but not with his general conclusions which just show to me that he never did research himself i.e. like the pope talking about sex! By not clearly sticking to his own experience and giving his view of why people stutter John does a colossal disservice to himself, Unspeakable, and the people whose experiences he wants to get across.
March 23rd, 2009 at 14:46