Blavk Man Essay, Research Paper

Stuttering and the Black Male: Another Form of Discrimination

Prepared by

Cara Williams

For

English 399-01

Dr. Lee

April 26, 2000

I. Introduction

My study is on stutterers. I will be looking in depth at what stuttering is and how it affects African American males. I will be conducting a case study on a young man who stutters and the social implications of his dysfluency. This is important in the field of linguistics because the number of African American males who stutter surpasses any other group. I would like to see what life is like for an African American male stutterer. My project is a nuerolinguistic study dealing with how stutteres, particularly black males, process language.

II. Review of Literature

In an article by Peter Howell, James Au-yeung and Stevie Sackin, they assert, “Stuttering arises when speakers abandon the use of this delaying strategy and carry on attempting production of the subsequent, partly prepared content word” (Howell 345). The article then goes on to speak about the words adults usually stutter on. The study in this article found that adults tend to stutter on content words