Differential stuttering during conversation and oral reading in Kuwaiti-Arabic speakers: a note on diglossia

ABSTRACT

The current study aimed to explore the frequency and types of stuttering in the oral reading and conversational samples of Arabic adults who stutter (AWS). Twelve Kuwaiti-Arabic AWS (mean age: 27.3 years) participated in the study. Each participant’s stuttering was analyzed in two speaking contexts -oral reading of a standard Arabic passage and spontaneous conversational speech. The results showed that among a majority of the participants the amount of stuttering in conversation was significantly lower than that of reading. However, no significant differences were found in disfluency types within and between samples. The higher occurrence of stuttering in reading may be related to the diglossic nature of Arabic. The linguistic and rhythmic distinctions between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Kuwaiti dialectal Arabic are explored to further explain the findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Stuttering
• fluency disorders
• Arabic diglossia
• Kuwait

Acknowledgments

A special gratitude goes to the adults who stutter for participating in this study. We wish to acknowledge former Kuwait University students (Reem Aladwani, Alaa Almomen, Munirah Almutari, and Zainab Almousa) for research assistantship in gathering and transcribing the data.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.