By telling another person that you might stammer, you can give them a clear idea of what is happening and how to react, William Martin has found.

One thing which amazes me, is just how little fluent people know about the problems that are faced by those of us who stammer. For example, the dread lots of us face doing apparently simple everyday tasks like paying a bus fare or having to wait at the beginning of a meeting to say a little about yourself.

Similarly, few 'fluents' realise just what walking thesauruses we can be. They do not realise that we know three or four words in advance that we will not be able to say a particular word - or that we can get around this by substituting a synonym or rephrasing what we were going to say. This is something that can occasionally lead us into saying the most ridiculous things. For example, I remember once intending to say 'people who escape from the Soviet Union', but being unable to say 'escape', said instead 'people who abscond from the Soviet Union'!

This is of course a trivial example but at times attempts at trying to be fluent can totally blind us to what we are actually saying. Consequently, we end up saying the silliest things and, as a result, some people treat us as eccentrics, ridiculing and poking fun at us at every opportunity.

people generally are a lot more understanding than you might think

I had assumed rather naively that such people were ridiculing me because of my stammer, but in retrospect I know that this was simply not the case. Rather, it was the actual words that I spoke, often perfectly fluently, that was the cause of the problem. Ironically, it was fear of ridicule that led me, until a few years ago, not to tell people why I spoke as I did. The reactions of most people really surprised me when I finally told them what the problem was. More often than not they ended up feeling really bad about their behaviour and tried to make amends. Indeed one of the first occasions I did this, was when I told a group of my students that a person 'was the ... sort of ... wife' of a colleague. Naturally, this resulted in some hilarity. However, when I explained that stammerers often insert words into sentences to avoid stammering, the students felt so guilty for laughing at what I had said that I felt guilty for saying it!

Just as I'm sure few readers of this article will have any real idea as to what it is like to be a wheelchair user, few 'fluents' have any real concept of what it is like to be a stammerer. People cannot read your mind. You will almost certainly find that many people, if you explain to them the cause of your behaviour, will be understanding, and will not ridicule you. If they do ridicule you and they are your friends, drop them and find new ones. If they ridicule you and they are colleagues or work mates, they are bullying you on the grounds of a disability, and you should go to your union and/or employer to make an official complaint about their behaviour. If your employer does nothing, under recent disability legislation you are almost certainly entitled to bring a court action against them.

Of course you might object to my advice because I work in what can be termed a 'safe' environment. I am a sociology lecturer in a university. The extent to which people would be so understanding and patient in other environments is an open question. Again, I'm fortunate in that my stammer is something which I am to a very large extent able to keep under control, and I can well imagine that many readers will shudder at the very thought of actually telling someone their innermost fears and feelings. Nevertheless, I hope that you find my advice useful.

I conclude by asking you to remember two things. One, people generally are a lot more understanding than you might think, and two, people cannot read your mind. You must let people know why you sometimes say the silliest of things!

From the Spring 2006 edition of Speaking Out, page 14