S-s-s-syncopation: Music, Modernity, and the Performance of Stammering (Ca. 1860–1930)

Abstract

The modern history of disability, and of speech impediments in particular, has largely been written as one of medical discourse and (more recently) of social and cultural imaginations. The pathology of speech appears as an embodied, but ultimately intangible, issue due to the transient nature of sound itself. Once produced, it disappears, and seems to escape memory. In this text, stammering is approached as an object of material history. Drawing on the "paper trail" left by medical experts, popular entertainers and a handful of stammerers' experiences, this paper examines the ways in which stammering was made material in the nineteenth century. The impediment not only provided (pseudo) medical actors with a lucrative market for various curative objects and practices, but also propelled the (sheet-)music business. Stammerers themselves appear in this story of materialization and market as both agents and objects. The cheap self-cures, medical manuals, sheet music and (later) recordings that were produced not only for, but also by, them, show how easily the impediment was aligned with the modern consumer's identity and how the persona of the stammerer was, ultimately, lodged in the Western collective memory in very material ways.

Voices that Matter?

“…It was, for example, assumed in the nineteenth century that women did not stutter, because their more fl exible vocal organs were so eminently suited for, and trained in, ceaseless chatter. 23 In reading these documents, we are invited to imagine the nineteenth century as a cacophony of women, hawkers, children, sailors, so-called "savages," and fools-but we are not to hear any of those sounds as voices capable of speech. They are merely noise.…”

Content analysis of the professional journal of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, III: 1966–2015—into the 21st century

“…Most, although not all (e.g., Sykes , Hoegaerts ) were written by SLTs. Some authors have explored specific conditions, such as the history of cleft palate therapy (Morley ) or stuttering (Rockey , Hoegaerts ), others especially in the SLT professional body's magazine Bulletin (e.g., Horseman ) consider how policy changes have influenced service delivery. There are also SLT‐based autobiographies (e.g., Woodhead , Brown , Hollingworth ) and biographies (e.g., Rockey , Logue and Conradi ).…”