Sensing the Stutter: A Stammerer's Perception of Lorca

Author: Bonaddio F.

Source: Neophilologus, Volume 82, Number 1, January 1998 , pp. 53-62(10)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

Communication is a complex affair, yet the difficulties and inaccuracies intrinsic to the communicative process are not faithfully represented by terms such as "speaker", "writer", "listener" or "reader" which are readily associated with the notional condition of being apt rather than the inherent quality of being inept. Ease in communication cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, given the numerous possible restraints upon it – be they psychological, social, political or ultimately linguistic –, communication is fundamentally an achievement and always a compromise. Whether it be due to the constraints of (self-)censorhip or to the fact that the speaking or writing subject can never say what they actually mean to say, fluency is always much more (or less) than what it seems to be at the moment of utterance and hearing or as the written word is read. Fluency, in this sense, is at best disfluency managed, contained or concealed. The aim of this essay is to approach reading and, in particular, a reading of Lorca's poetry from the stammerer's perspective and frame of reference in the belief that everyone, including the poet, is in some way or other orally and literately challenged. It is hoped that the poet's own "stammer" – or at least his strategies for managing or addressing it – may be intuited, if not seen and heard, and that consequently new meanings will emerge from beneath the text's fluent veneer.

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK

Publication date: 1998-01-01