A Hispanic mother's beliefs about stuttering aetiology: A systemic functional linguistic analysis

The aim of this study was to identify the linguistic resources a Hispanic mother used to convey her beliefs about the aetiology of her adult son's stuttering. A qualitative research paradigm was adopted for data collection and analysis. An Ecuadorian mother and her adult son who stutters recorded a conversation in Spanish about the son's stuttering. Tools derived from systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory were used to analyse conversation transcripts and to describe the word choices and sentence structures the mother used to talk about her son's stuttering. The mother deflected community-assigned blame for causing her son's stuttering by configuring her 'strong' temperament as a separate, uncontrollable entity. She structured the pervasiveness of stigma, lack of resources and misinformation within the community as causes for her inability to identify and seek help for her son's stuttering, which also served as a means for deflecting blame. SFL-based analyses were appropriate tools for the investigation of how a Hispanic mother construes her views, attitudes and experiences relative to her son's stuttering. Clinical implications of findings regarding parent education and the utility of SFL-based tools in the speech-language therapy setting are discussed.