Keynote Address

Foxes, Scorpions, and Stuttering Research: How a Constructivist Perspective Might Help us Avoid Getting Stung

Anthony DiLollo

An old Native American folk tale tells of the interaction between a fox and a scorpion that ends poorly because the fox didn’t understand enough about the nature of his adversary. In the world of stuttering research, there is a danger that we might end up like the fox – knowing a lot about what stuttering looks and sounds like, but too little about the complex nature of the problem and how it affects the individuals who live with it on a daily basis. The implication of this story is that there may be a need for an increase in the qualitative exploration of stuttering to provide knowledge that compliments the wealth of quantitative knowledge that exists and continues to be produced. In this presentation, a constructivist perspective on stuttering will be offered as one useful framework around which qualitative exploration of stuttering might be organized.