April 10th, 2009

Stuttering character in Doonesbury

#27

There’s a stuttering character in the current story arc in the newspaper comic strip, Doonesbury. I’m not too familiar with Doonesbury as I don’t subscribe to a newspaper during the week. So I only see it on weekends. From what I gather, it’s a political/current events comic. In this arc, a woman is meeting a guy who stutters. That’s pretty much it so far. The story seems very recent.

One curious thing though, it is revealed in this comic that the stutterer actually has aphasia. And I’m such a sucker for stuttering in the media ;) Stuttering isn’t mentioned in this wikipedia article on aphasia. Since I personally take anything on wikipedia with a grain of salt (just in case, you never know), I did a Google search to find out more. I’m still perplexed.

No offence to Gary Trudeau, I’m sure he did his research or is probably close to someone with aphasia, however, I’m not familiar with it so I’m educating myself. Can anyone let me know if aphasia causes stuttering? Are the two similar?

3 Responses to “Stuttering character in Doonesbury”

1. Manjiri Patkar
   

   Here are a couple of definitions I found in my textbooks…

   1.”A language impairment that crosses all input and output modalities. Can be divided into various symptoms.”
   -Brookshire, R.H.,(2007). Introduction to Neurogenic Communication Disorders. St.Louis: Mosby, Inc. 665.

   2. “An impairment due to localized brain injury and affecting understanding, retrieving and formulating meaningful and sequential elements of language. ”
   - Owens, R.E., Metz, D.E., Haas, A.,(2003). Introduction to Communication Disorders A Lifespan Perspective. Boston:Pearson Education, Inc. 528.

   I’ll post some more if/when I find them.

   Cheers!

   ;o)
   ~M

   Manjiri Patkar, PhD.

   April 10th, 2009 at 11:01
2. Greg
   

   Lesions in the anterior (or front) language areas of the brain can cause non-fluent output. But it’s not like our stuttering…

   It’s really tough to easily discuss, because it all depends on the size, severity, and placement of the lesion–as well as other concomitant issues as well.

   April 10th, 2009 at 18:10
3. Norbert
   

   You can find information here:

   http://www.speakability.org.uk/Aphasia+Information/

   April 15th, 2009 at 05:45