THREAD. Ok, this must be said. To everyone who is down on Joe Biden for sounding, slow, old, confused last night -- let's put things in perspective. Biden has been managing his fluency disorder (also called stuttering) his whole life. #WeSpeechies #SLPeeps #StutteringAwareness
Stuttering is exacerbated by stress, and Trump knows this. He was trying to fluster Biden, to make him stutter so that he sounds "dumb." Despite the circumstances, Biden did a REMARKABLE job managing the stress and using the exact strategies we as SLPs often teach.
Many of these strategies, to the naive person, may make him sound slow or confused. For example: 1) Speak slowly, and especially ease into the first word -- to the naive person this can make you sound slow, but in fact it's strategic.
2) If you find yourself stuck on a word with particularly troublesome sounds, try to use a different word instead -- that may make you sound confused, or like you forgot what you were saying, but again, it's a tried and true strategy.
3) Give the word a "light touch" -- this may sound like you're cowering or mumbling, but it helps you avoid some potentially tricky sounds.
If you think Biden sounds old, weak, slow, confused -- believe me, he knows EXACTLY what he's doing, and he's doing it beautifully given the ridiculously difficult and bullying circumstances. I for one am incredibly proud to see speech disorder recovery on a national stage!
And while telling your bullying interlocutor to shut up is not a canonical strategy, I'm considering adding it to my bag of tricks 😁
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