Speech Disabilities and Stigmas

Erving Goffman was a twentieth century sociologist who researched social stigmas. He defined a stigma as “an attribute, behavior, or reputation that is socially discrediting in a particular way.” 
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_stigma#Goffman.27s_theory) Goffman called a stigma towards anyone with a noticeable speech problem discrediting based on the premise that speech is often one of the first traits we notice in another person. A stigma about their speech – even if the afflicted speaker is a Nobel Prize winner — can overshadow and erase everything else.

I am living proof of Goffman’s theory. When I was eleven and lost my ability to speak normally, I felt the sting of stigmas. Actually, it began earlier.

From the time my sister and I were seven or eight years old, my parents labeled us. My sister did well in school and was called “the smart one.” Academically I struggled, but I was pretty and called “the pretty one.” These labels weren’t just given once, but repeatedly throughout our school years and beyond. As children, my sister and I believed whatever our parents told us and, unfortunately, what their labels implied – my sister wasn’t pretty and I wasn’t smart. When my normal speech disappeared, it was around 1960. The word dumb means stupid, but it was used then to also describe someone who can’t speak. I hated that word and I struggled for decades to convince myself and everyone else that that word didn’t define me.

During high school my mother doted a lot on my appearance but often said that I had a lot of common sense. As a typical teenager, and perhaps due to my common sense, I began to question almost everything my parents said. I realized that I wasn’t dumb in the sense of intelligence, and I didn’t have to believe the assumptions that my parents or anyone else made about me. However, by the time I was fourteen I had already heard enough from television, radio, at school and at home to convince myself that the world was filled with people who had preconceived notions about what I could or couldn’t accomplish based on my speech. It was obvious that my speech wasn’t normal, so I began to fear that the quality of my life and the opportunities I had wouldn’t be either.

Whatever my parents said or thought, they prepared me to be self-reliant. I learned stenography in school and quickly became an extraordinary typist who could accurately punch out almost 100 words a minute. My mother was sure that I could do secretarial work, but I was extremely apprehensive about it. I fervently wanted to be independent, but using the telephone was a huge problem and I had no other marketable skills.

I earned my first paycheck from a part-time job I had during high school. I learned to file and sometimes used my steno and typing skills. The head of the company and most of the staff were very nice, but my supervisor often belittled me. She told me that my clothes weren’t ironed properly, and commented about my inability to properly communicate. I was easily intimidated by anyone who mentioned my speech. When she said, “You need to stop stuttering,” I would have given anything to respond but I couldn’t. If I got angry the undiagnosed blockage I always felt in my throat started to feel bigger and made my abnormal speech even worse. As long as I worked there I tried to do my best and prove that I was worthy, but I avoided my supervisor as much as possible.

After high school I attended college, but I wasn’t ready emotionally so I dropped out in my first term. I knew I couldn’t become a teacher, a lawyer, or anything particularly interesting because everything demanded normal speech. My speech ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it was okay. At other times, often depending on my moods and how jittery I might be, it was horrible. I tried to be creative about work when I began looking for a job in the 1960s, but there weren’t a lot of choices.

I was fired from one job because my boss heard me speak on the phone. Forging ahead, I got another job as a secretary in the advertising department of the Chicago Sun-Times. My supervisor was a kind man, but noticed how hard it was for me to speak at times. One day he tried to bring it up but I could tell that he didn't know how. I could also tell that it must have been a problem for him to have me as his assistant.

When I was twenty years old I moved from Chicago to California and began working at the University of California in Berkeley. My job consisted of maintaining library serial card files, some typing, stenography, and a little phone work. Again, there was a woman in the office who constantly voiced her low opinion of me, usually regarding my voice. Often she uttered little biting remarks after I got off of the phone like, “You need to do something about your speech.” I had no idea what to say and, even if I did, I couldn’t. After a few years of working with her and two other kindly women, a co-supervisor stepped in and said something to her. I wish I had the voice to do that for myself, but I was grateful that someone else did. In time I left that job, worked part-time with a lovely woman in another department and went back to college.

After I graduated college I continued working office jobs. They bored me and I wasn’t happy at any of them, but I didn’t know what else to do to earn a living. I worked in numerous departments at a children’s hospital, for a friend who runs a bakery, and finally in the publishing industry.

I felt fortunate to find a position that didn’t make a lot of demands on my speech. Computers were coming into use when I began working in publishing, so email soon became available and I could do most of my work without using the phone much. I spent my time editing and performing other tasks that were more interesting than the basic office jobs I held in the past, but the pay was still fairly low and I felt – as I always had – that my job required less than I really had to offer.

The office held weekly meetings that I dreaded. Everyone had to report on what they were doing and I always tried to make my comments as brief as possible. Usually my voice failed me. Those who were the best communicators often dominated the meeting and I knew that they were also the best paid. It didn’t seem to matter that I could write well, work quickly, or be a whiz on the computer. My inability to speak normally kept me from moving up.

For years I tried to figure out what I could do that would give me enough money and be fulfilling. I envied anyone who had a career they had chosen for themselves. My work remained the one area of my life, regarding my speech affliction, where I felt cheated. I always wanted more.

After working in publishing for twenty years I was in a position to go back to school and learn American Sign Language (ASL). I was fifty-eight years old. Seven years earlier I had finally been diagnosed and started on treatments for my speech problem — a rare and severe speech disability.

I wanted to learn ASL ever since I lost my normal speech as a child, but my parents were against it. I wish I had the opportunity to be a teacher for the Deaf as a young woman, but the stigma my parents held against Deaf people prevented that. They believed that Deaf people were dumb. And in my parents’ minds, the word meant unintelligent.

After completing a two-year program for ASL, volunteering at a Deaf school and a Deaf counseling and advocacy organization, I knew I wanted to work with Deaf children or other children who may not have speech as a means of communication. I was tired of trying to avoid all the stigmas and fit into the normal work world where people are expected to hear and speak and see. For once in my life I wanted to feel relaxed at a job and not worry about someone mentioning my speech. I wanted to be around other people who were without a voice, like me.

I am so grateful that I found a job where I work with both Deaf children and hearing children who have speech problems. As soon as I began working with them to teach ASL and help them to communicate, I knew I had found my calling.

I know that the stigma against anyone with a severe speech problem still exists. Sadly, I continue to meet parents who have lower than normal expectations for their disabled child. Any child who is Deaf or speech disabled should still have a normal or higher standard set for them. If someone can’t speak but is given language and becomes literate, there is no reason to think their mind is less than. Expecting that child to fail or be dumb is not based on truth; it is a stigma, an unfair and misinformed delusion.

I will always fight against stigmas that may lower someone’s expectations and opportunities in life. My prayer is that the children I work with will never feel the sting of a stigma; that they will only know equality and the opportunities that come with it in a world where they can follow their dreams.