Stuttering frequency and severity in Kannada-English balanced bilingual adults

There is limited research concerning the nature of stuttering in balanced bilinguals. Hence, the aim of this study was to compare aspects of stuttering between two languages in balanced bilinguals who stutter (BWS). Eighteen adult Kannada-English BWS participated in the study, with Kannada as the first language (L1) and English as the second language (L2). As indicated by online language proficiency test results, all the participants were highly proficient balanced bilinguals. Audio-video recordings were done in both the languages across three tasks (reading, spontaneous speech, and telephonic conversation) and two situations (within the clinic and beyond clinic). They were analyzed for percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and perceptual severity rating scores (SEV). Results suggest significantly higher %SS in English compared to Kannada for both spontaneous speech (SS) and telephonic conversation (TC) tasks. SEV scores indicated significantly higher scores for English compared to Kannada for TC task. A significant positive correlation was also found across the %SS-SEV pair. Results highlight variability in the nature of stuttering in balanced BWS. Apart from the other factors, differences in the linguistic structure may be one of the reasons for differences in stuttering.