Empowerment through a visual language

What is the fluent gaze? Can we see it in cinema? Is the gaze the right conception due to the auditory nature of stammering? Is there an oppositional gaze: a stammered/dysfluent gaze?

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‘The scene for the portrait is designed by a stammerer; photographed and painted by a stammerer; of a stammerer stammering. The stammered gaze.’ — Patrick Campbell

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Close-up of Dysfluent mono typeface, in use in Dysfluent magazine issue 1.

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Publication

The action of making 
something generally known.

— Oxford Dictionary

The format that the text / typeface is packaged in is as important as the textual content or typeface itself. Kind of like how in JJJJJerome’s work, there’s an interesting relationship to song or score sheets, through his use of a publication that is linked to his music. The format of this requires a unique level of engagement from the reader and listener.

Since I created the first issue of Dysfluent, I have been thinking about how the format of a publication defines the intent behind the work. It made me think about while there is a certain power to publication, there is also a quietness and consideration to it. At least from a design or artistic perspective, it requires a great deal of engagement from the viewer.

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Protest

A statement or action expressing disapproval of 
or objection to something.

— Oxford Dictionary

Recently I have been thinking of this concept of display, or posters, or for lack of a better term, protest.

Protest to me is really interesting from a creative or design stand point. For a person to display a poster, it is a deliberate act of reflecting an inner voice or identity, for the world to see.

I think of teenagers pinning up posters in their bedrooms, and of people marching on the streets voicing concerns. There is a certain passion or aggression (maybe not the right word?) to the idea of posters.

How does the idea of protest or display speak to earlier discussions on stigma?

I was interested to see what Fiona showed earlier in our talks, that banner where children visualised their stammer. There is something really nice there in terms of displaying their dysfluency.

It gets me thinking then. What is the content of the posters? What do they say? Do they need to say anything? or can they just be visualisations of dysfluency?

Committee for the Big Stutter Party

Self disclosure/stereotype threat:

• Children can develop a “growth mindset” through learning that success takes effort.
• mistakes are opportunities to learn and grow from.
• This mindset encourages children to seek out new challenges and fulfil their potential.

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Therapeutic practices must adapt to shifts in the conditions of people’s lives.

— Winslade (2013)

It is no longer enough to give people a relationship in which they are free from being judged. What they need is an opportunity to actively deconstruct the normalising judgements operating on them and to push back against the effects of these judgements.

— Winslade, p.8 (2013)

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Communication as Ritual

• Communication, commonness, communion.
• James Carey: the model directs our attention “not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs".
• Akin to religious mass.
• Akin to reading a paper “[n]ews reading, and writing, is a ritual act and moreover a dramatic one. What is arrayed before the reader is not pure information but a portrayal of the contending forces in the world [emphasis added]” (p. 16).

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Dysfluent Accidents as Ritual

• Carol Padden: Ritual emphasizes “performance, activity, and the materiality of communication itself. In this framework, meaning is not so much the definition of a word or sentence but instead is constructed in situ, in social and cultural activity” (p. 44).
• Unlike sending a message, meaning gets enacted in the very midst of unruly bodies that excrete “all levels of expression, from the minute details of discourse—from pitch, emphasis, gesture, head tilts, and eye gaze” (p. 44).
• Moreover, since communication happens “on site,” time cannot be transcended or otherwise avoided with speed but must be lived through.

• Crossed Wires: perhaps it's not that my grumpy co-worker “misheard” my stuttered speech, but that he didn’t want to listen and did not want to belong in time to a common world with this disabled person.
• The Stall: “Part of it feels like my body goes into a kind of supplication or prayer almost. I have a friend who once referred to it as ‘watching me ask for the word’” (Ellis, 2020, n.p.).
• The misfire: “The unexpectedness of stuttering forces both listener and speaker into a space of trust and vulnerability. They must both give up control of the situation. The person speaking does not know when and for how long they will stutter. Likewise, the person listening does not know when to expect a stutter. In order for both people to communicate, they must trust one another. (Constantino 2016, para. 5)
• Ritual? Anti-ritual?

• Facilitating cultural competence and awareness
• Understanding the dynamics of stigma, self-stigma and masking and the psychological consequences of living with a concealable stigmatised identity
  
• Exploring the lived experience and feelings associated with stammering in an ableist world that privileges fluency
  
• Understanding minority stress and ableist trauma
  
• Supporting the development of new affirming narratives around stammering
  
• Finding own unique stammering aesthetic
  
• Disclosure and self-advocacy
  
• Community

• Public information and education programmes
• Reducing barriers – creating a stammer-friendly environment and culture
• Campaigning
• Lobbying
• Representation
• Cultural change
• Celebration of stammering and difference