commentr/StutterJune 3, 2016

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I haven't been able to watch the video yet (frustratingly in each link I tried the video wouldn't load ... If I were a conspiracy theorist ....) But I can tell you a few things: 1) before I tried to listen to the video I had an idea of what I was going to hear - Obama is known for being excessively normally disfluent, that is he doesn't stutter but he has more "normal disfluencies" (as opposed to "stuttering-like disfluencies") than the average person. 2) after failing to watch the video I found a transcript of his descent into a "stuttering mess." That transcription depicted exactly what I expected to hear: lots of single-syllable whole word repetitions. These are "normal" disfluencies. "Normal" as in they are typical in all speakers. It appears Obama had a couple rather long disfluencies in quick succession. Lending some of his more undiscerning critics to say he became a "stuttering mess". Obama is known for being excessively normally disfluent. But his disfluencies are "normal" disfluencies. That is they occur between word boundaries and not in the middle of words. If I had only his speeches to use for a fluency analysis I would likely conclude that he does not stutter. However, with the right speech sample I would note that he does have a lot of disfluencies. But because they're not "stuttering-like" disfluencies I would not classify him as "stuttering." However, I would also have to note that the situations that this speech sample came from was a high-stress environment (therefore I could not conclude if his speech was representative of his normal way of talking) This was probably more information than you wanted so: tl/dr: He's not stuttering per se, but he does make more "normal" disfluencies than the average person

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Causes & Variability

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Situational Variability