Positioning Identity in Clinical Interviews with People who Stutter

Abstract

Clinicians often rely on ethnographic interviews to make judgments about the effect of stuttering on the lives of people who stutter. This form of interview aids the clinician in assessing specific dimensions of the client’s life (e.g. career choice, education etc) that might be impacted by dysfluency. Further, the information gathered from ethnographic interviews is used to make professional judgments relating to the client’s personality type and behavioral traits. This study used methods associated with discursive psychology to examine data taken from two ethnographic interviews between a clinician and two people who stuttered. The interviews were semi-structured and used probe questions to elicit the participants’ viewpoints about the effects of stuttering on their lives. Data taken from the interviews were then examined to investigate the subject positions participants discursively aligned to within their accounts. We discuss the implications of making clinical judgments regarding a client’s identity from such interviews.