postr/StutterAugust 29, 2023

My ramblings on stuttering and lexical importance of words

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My ramblings on stuttering and lexical importance of words So I've been forming a theory about my stutter and how it's connected to the meaning of words lately. Of course we all know the main issue are certain sounds that we have more difficulty with, but we also know there's a lot of mental aspects to it. In my case, I've noticed how I can sometimes say words that start with a letter perfectly fine and other times have trouble with them, depending on how I'm using those words in a sentence. Words can have what I coined 'lexical weight'. Lexical weight is how important the word is to complete the meaning or sense of the sentence/expression. I can start saying the first word of almost any sense pretty fine, because my interlocutor still doesn't know what I will say, so the first word holds no value to give meaning to the sentence yet. However, if I continue the sentence, I slowly build meaning up and with that, expectation of completeness. For example, if I'm at the point of saying 'I went to the shop to buy...' now the listener really expects me to continue the sentence. The word that comes after has a lot of lexical weight, and I usually have more trouble saying it fluently, more or less independently of the letter it starts with. And I have special problems when I want to say an expression or a saying that is comprised of more than two words. If you start saying 'better late than...' then everyone will know you have to say 'never' now, so there is a lot of built up expectation, or how I say, the next word has a lot of lexical weight, and thus I find it more difficult to pronounce. Anyways, this were the ramblings of someone who has no studies of anything related to language whatsoever and I'm aware it's a huge simplification, but I just like to think about this kind of stuff lol, I hope you enjoyed it.

Themes

Causes & VariabilityAnticipation & Avoidance

Subthemes

Propositionality & WeightOverthinking & Monitoring