Chapter 5. Stuttering in two languages

The purpose of this study was to describe the linguistic resources used by four Spanish-English speaking bilingual males who stutter to convey their attitudes and experiences with bilingual stuttering. Participants were 16, 28, 29, and 63 years of age. Analytic tools grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, namely those based on experiential meaning and appraisal, revealed how participants structured their talk to emphasize details and experiences of significance. Aspects of being a second language learner were described as a facilitator and a hindrance to fluency, while stuttering was reported as having both a positive and negative impact on language learning. Characteristics of Spanish grammar such as high frequency of vowel-initial words and morphosyntactic structure were described as barriers to fluent speech.