Stuttering FAQ (from Frequently Searched Google Terms)

There are two general philosophies of stuttering treatment:

Fluency shaping is the process of training a person with a stutter to maintain a style of speech that reduces the likelihood of stuttering. It assumes that if a person can effortfully control their speech, then the anxiety and discomfort associated with stuttering will no longer be a problem. Often, this type of treatment begins with a very unnatural speaking style to promote 100% fluent speech. Over time, this speaking style is shaped to sound natural to the ignorant observer. 
Stuttering acceptance is the process of teaching a person who stutters how to function in their life without trying to change their stutter directly. It assumes that stuttering is only a problem because of the ways in which it impacts the lives of people who stutter, causing them discomfort and anxiety; therefore, treating the anxiety and discomfort will lead to the individual becoming happier and communicating more freely with their loved ones. Paradoxically, people who accept their stuttering fully can end up speaking more fluidly than those who pursue fluency shaping treatment!

The type of treatment that a person receives will likely depend on their attitudes, the severity of their stutter, and their clinician’s perspective on stuttering. If there is one type of stuttering treatment that you would greatly prefer, then be sure to discuss your clinician’s treatment philosophy during your intake conversation. Questions that you can ask include:

Do you use a fluency shaping or stuttering acceptance approach in your therapy? (this will prompt a very straight-forward answer)
What types of goals do you often work on with clients? (hint: fluency shaping clinicians will describe strategies to change your speech, and acceptance-promoting clinicians will describe strategies to investigate your emotional responses to stuttering or to change your perspective)
How will we know when I am ready to be discharged from therapy? (hint: fluency shaping clinicians will say that it is when your speech is stutter-free, and acceptance-promoting clinicians will say that it is when you feel confident in your speech regardless of whether you stutter)

Yes, a head injury can either cause or worsen stuttering.

Most definitely. As airflow is the foundation of speech, when the airflow is obstructed due to tension and uncontrolled closing of oral muscles, the sound produced is compromised. When airflow is maintained, when you are singing, for example, it is much easier to maintain fluency in speech.

Word repetitions such as  “Well well I dont think thats true” is not considered a stutter but rather a typical disfluency that most people have who do not sutter.  A part repetition of a word like ‘wwwell’ (sound repetition) or ‘wewell’ (syllable repetition) would be considered a stutter. 

The National Stuttering Association (https://westutter.org/) is a good website to find news about stuttering. The ‘Stuttering Foundation’  is another website that provides the most up to date news (https://www.stutteringhelp.org)

Voice is essentially air that is vibrated at the level of the neck, and filtered through the mouth and nose cavities. When an individual stutters, the voice may change as there is additional tension on the vocal folds and on the musculature surrounding it. Tension may lead the vocal folds to tense and tighten, leading to a pressed voice, or even one that has frequent voice breaks.

There are many, many places where people can go to learn about stuttering! Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of useful resources:
Your country’s association for people who stutter. The Canadian Stuttering Association has some valuable resources for people who stutter in Canada. Other countries’ equivalent organizations include the National Stuttering Association in the USA, the British Stammering Association in the UK, the Stuttering Association for the Young in Australia, or the International Stuttering Association worldwide. Of course, you can always look at websites for other countries’ organizations for more information!
 
Books published by scientists, speech-language pathologists, or people who stutter. Interesting books include:
Self-Therapy for the Stutterer, by Malcolm Fraser (a guidebook on how to manage a stutter – by a stutterer!)
Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice, by Katharine Preston (a memoir)
Stuttering: A Life Bound Up In Words, by Marty Jezer (a memoir)
Stuttering: Inspiring Stories and Professional Wisdom, by Taro Alexander, Joel Korte, and Phil Schneider (a compilation of essays about stuttering by stutterers, disability activists and stuttering treatment professionals)
Who Do You See? The Struggles of a Teenager Who Stutters, by Sean George (informative, normalizing the experiences of teens who stutter)
 
Local support groups. Your community may have a meetup group for people who stutter, or parents of people who stutter. While these groups may not be as useful for finding information about stuttering itself, they will provide a lot of information and guidance from people’s lived experiences of stuttering.

Interviews can be a nerve-wracking experience, as there is much at stake. Job applicants may feel that every word they say has to be well chosen and produced perfectly to create and maintain a positive first impression. With this increased pressure, anyone can stumble! The main reason stuttering occurs most often in interviews is that the speaker’s attention is divided. The attention is not only on the message to be said, but also on how it’s said and how it may be perceived; there is also much attention on the non-verbal information that is being received, and also a lot on actively interpreting them. Sometimes the stress can encourage focus on the content of the message, but in many cases, it only takes away from it. This leads the speaker to appear uncertain about their message and gives away the speakers’ nervousness.

There is a growing community of people who have become disability advocates for themselves as stutterers (or people with stutters) and others who stutter. Much in the same way that using a wheelchair limits people only to the extent that society constructs inaccessible infrastructure, many argue that stuttering limits speakers only as much as they are judged for stuttering. They draw parallels between the ways that society (and the medical field, including speech-language pathologists) treats and discusses people who stutter and the way that people with other disabilities are treated and discussed.
Some people who stutter identify with the disability label, while others do not. In the end, it is up to the person who stutters to determine whether they identify with the label. 
To read more about stuttering and disability, you can begin here:
https://www.didistutter.org/blog/stuttering-and-disability-is-one-of-these-things-not-like-the-other
https://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/is-stuttering-a-reason-not-to-hire-someone/
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/my-disability-lesson

An individual’s eligibility for the Disability Tax Credit is determined not by the individual, or their medical professionals, but by the Canada Revenue Agency. You may ask your speech-language pathologist to complete the documentation required to apply for the DTC, but if you are seeking private services (as is often the case for teens or adults who stutter) then you may be charged for your clinician’s time to complete it. 
Of the functions of daily living that the DTC covers, speaking is the only one that applies to people who stutter. To demonstrate a speaking impairment, the CRA will require information about your speech from a medical doctor, a nurse, or a speech-language pathologist. 
These are the criteria to be eligible for the DTC for a Speaking disability (taken from the CRA website): “A person is considered markedly restricted in speaking if, even with appropriate therapy, medication, and devices, they meet both of the following criteria:
They are unable or take an inordinate amount of time to speak so as to be understood by another person familiar with the patient, in a quiet setting.
This is the case all or substantially all the time (at least 90% of the time).”

Here are a few inspiration quotes about stuttering:
The one thing I’ve learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be (John Stossel)
You don’t have a choice as to whether you stutter but you do have a choice as to how you stutter (Joseph G. Sheehan)
Stuttering is no simple speech impediment. It is a complicated disorder which has both physical and emotional aspects (Malcolm Fraser)
If there were some way to distract your mind from thoughts of fear so that you didn’t think about your stuttering, you would probably have no trouble (Malcom Fraser)
Keep in mind that… the less you avoid words and situations, the less you will stutter in the long run (J.D. Williams)
Stuttering is ok because what I have to say is worth repeating (Anonymous). 
https://www.pinterest.ca/stutteringfdn/inspirational-quotes-for-people-who-stutter/

While we have seen that genetics plays a role in stuttering, a specific gene contributing to stuttering characteristics have not been found. We know generally that stuttering tends to run in families, and that a child who stutters is more likely to have a family member that stutters than a child who does not.

If you find your stuttering is getting worse, check in with your environment. Do you find there are additional environmental stressors? These could include changes in school, job, or a social circle. These stressors could also be in the form of additional responsibilities on you, due to an increase in workload. Overall, when you find that the demands of your life exceed what you understand to be your capacity, it may be difficult to keep up. In addition to environmental stressors, check in with your speaking pace. Do you find that your mouth speaks too fast for your brain to keep up? Each sound that we produce is a result of airflow that has been shaped by our tongue, teeth and or lips. Perhaps slowing down and thinking about each sound that you are saying will allow you to improve your fluency.

The Stuttering Severity Instrument is a standardized assessment used by speech-language pathologists (known as speech-language therapists in some jurisdictions) to evaluate the severity of a person’s stutter. 
The assessment covers the frequency of stuttering in both reading and speech, the duration of moments of stuttering, and the secondary behaviours associated with the stuttering. Each is rated independently of the others on a specified scale, and the total scores are added to achieve an overall severity rating.
The SSI describes clearly the degree to which primary and secondary behaviours of stuttering are present in an individual’s speech. It does not, however, assess how severely an individual is impacted by their stutter. For some, a “moderately-severe” stutter may feel like nothing more than a mild nuisance, or may even be a point of pride. For others, a mild stutter has a profound impact on their daily lives. Additional assessments would be needed to address the impact of a stutter.
 

There has been some marketing in recent years of a “miracle cure” for stuttering, often coming in the form of a hearing-aid-like device. These devices make use of delayed auditory feedback, playing the sound of a person’s speech back into their ear at a very slight delay (a small fraction of a second). Often, this will make a person’s speech completely fluent. 
However, these devices have three very important downsides:
They are expensive, and their cost is typically paid out-of-pocket by individuals who stutter.
They manage, rather than cure, stuttering. When the device is turned off, the individual’s speech will return to normal.
People may develop a reliance on the device. Behavioural treatments rely on acceptance of stuttering, a set of strategies that can be applied at any time, and increased understanding of stuttering in general. These devices may work, but if at any time they malfunction or break, especially if this was to happen at an important moment, people who stutter may find themselves much less fluent than they would otherwise have been in that situation, because of severe anxiety about entering the situation without the device to rely on.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a sequencing disorder making it difficult for individuals to say a string of sounds. While a speaker with AOS  may have no problem saying a word like “paw”, there would be difficulty in saying “popular” due to the several syllables it contains. Individuals who have apraxia of speech know what they want to say, but the tongue movements to create the appropriate sounds become difficult to coordinate. Those who stutter have a similar difficulty of not being able to get out the sounds they want to say, but the trouble is less about coordination and sequencing, and more about tension and airflow. For individuals with AOS, longer words and sentences are more difficult than shorter ones; for those who stutter, the length of the word or phrase is mostly irrelevant– is it more so the sounds, and particularly the initial ones.

Cluttering is a fluency disorder “characterized by a perceived rapid and/or irregular speech rate, which results in breakdowns in speech clarity and/or fluency.” (ASHA, https://www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Clinical-Topics/Childhood-Fluency-Disorders/). While stuttering is also a fluency disorder, there are several ways in which stuttering and cluttering often differ from each other.
People who stutter are typically painfully aware of their difficulty speaking, whereas people who clutter are often unaware that their speech is meaningfully different from that of other people (and may also feel frustrated that people do not understand them).
Cluttering tends to present as rapid bursts of speech that causes their words to blur together. In comparison, stuttering may be relatively stable despite the person’s rate of speech. As a result, cluttering breaks the general rhythm of a sentence, whereas stuttering breaks the rhythm of a sentence only during moments of stuttering, preserving the general rhythm of the sentence.
Stuttering is typically made up of three types of disfluencies: sound/syllable repetitions, prolongations, and blocks. These types of disfluencies are very rarely ever observed in fluent speakers. Cluttering is typically made up of non-stuttering disfluencies, the types of errors that a non-stutterer might make while nervous during a presentation (e.g. mispronunciations of words, repeating words and sentences, pauses in awkward moments to find the right word to use).
A speech-language pathologist (or speech-language therapist, depending on your jurisdiction) can help determine whether a fluency disorder is stuttering or cluttering, and assist in the construction of an appropriate treatment plan for you or your loved one.

Just as one’s speech may fluctuate between clear to unclear, good to bad, fluency can come and go. The better days may be those where the speaker is well rested, calm and feeling generally confident. On days when the speaker is feeling tired, restless and anxious, disfluency may be more common in their speech. Fluency can also depend on the individuals the speaker is speaking with. A stutterer may have no trouble speaking with family members and friends, but in conversations with strangers or in interviews, they may have difficulty getting their words out.

While trauma in the form of emotional distress can aggravate stuttering, it has not been found to cause it. Rather than a cause, stuttering is a trigger– something that sets off a disorder in individuals who are genetically predisposed to developing the disorder. If trauma had caused stuttering, psychotherapy should be effective in treating it; yet psychotherapy has been unsuccessful. (https://www.stutteringhelp.org/stress-stuttering)

You could use singing as a stepping stone. Stuttering tends to magically disappear when an individual sings as the maintenance of airflow and voicing during singing allows sounds to come out easily. You could also try stretching and connecting the words you have to say, as it tends to be the initial sounds of words that individuals have difficulty with. In stretching and connecting the sounds, making your words seem like a single word, you can bypass this hurdle. 

There are several ways to reduce stutters in speech. One way is to use a light contact of your oral muscles to ensure there is no tension. These oral muscles include your tongue and lips. For a sound like /p/, one can choose to make the contact between lips light so that the release of the /p/ sound is less explosive and more focused on airflow. Another way to speak without stuttering is to stretch the initial sound, if the sound can be stretched. For example, rather than jumping into the /m/ sound in may, one can hum the sound– having the sound come out of the nose. By establishing an airflow before producing the sound with one’s lips, the speaker can achieve greater control and thus fluency. 

Well, we treat stuttering at WELL SAID: Toronto Speech Therapy — so we’re biased.

In North America, stuttering is treated by speech-language pathologists. You may also see the initialisms SLP (which stands for speech-language pathologist), SLT (speech-language therapist, used in the UK), or ST (speech therapist).
These professionals hold degrees and have completed supervised training in the assessment and treatment of speech, language, communication and swallowing disorders. They are typically registered with a college (a regulatory body that protects the public), and can only provide services for clients in the area in which they are registered. This means that you will be limited to working with speech-language pathologists near you (typically, either residing in the province where you live or jointly registered in both their place of work and your residence).

To find these SLPs (or SLTs), there are a few avenues that you can try:

Google “stuttering speech therapy [city name]” or “stuttering speech therapy [province name]” to find private practices advertising stuttering services in your area. Searching by country, or without a location, is likely to generate results showing popular speech therapy clinics that you will be unable to access, as you may receive listings for clinics in other jurisdictions.
Ask your family doctor/GP (or your teacher, if you are still in the school system), who may refer you to a clinician that they are aware of in the community.
Search for the college of speech-language pathologists in your area (to start, try googling “speech language college [province name]”). These college websites typically include a public listing of practitioners that you can contact to look for a good fit. Some of these listings are searchable, in which case you can search specifically for a clinician with experience treating stuttering (AKA fluency).

Stuttering can develop later in life due to psychological or neurological trauma. It has been found that  people who have had any form of brain injury such as stroke or TBI (traumatic brain injury) can develop stuttering. It has also been found that when people go through an emotional trauma such as the death of a family member, and they are not able to cope, they can also develop a stutter. There have also been medications tested such as antidepressants that have been found to develop a stutter in adults.

Stuttering may develop in children at a young age. This is often either caused by genetics or children trying to use their speech without  their speech apparatus being fully developed in order to produce certain sounds, which may end up causing a stutter. A lot of children do grow out of a stutter, but on occasion they do not and then may require speech therapy to help overcome their difficulties. Once someone has a stutter at an older age there is no cure, though speech therapy and counselling can provide strategies to help minimize the severity of a sutter.

The World Health Organization does not specifically define stuttering, or propose a treatment plan for stuttering. It does, however, present a framework that can be immensely helpful to understand the impact of stuttering on any given person: the International Classification of Function, Disability, and Health (the WHO ICF; 2001). It offers a framework of stuttering assessment and treatment which is important in several ways:
Assessments include not only a description of the behaviour itself (e.g. what happens when the person stutters) but also attitudinal and environmental factors (e.g. how others react to their stutter, how their school or workplace is set up to minimize or maximize their success, their own thoughts and feelings about stuttering). For a person who stutters to function well in their life, all of these things must be considered in developing a treatment plan.
Treatment targets are selected based on the client’s needs, rather than determined by their clinicians. Clients whose normal interpersonal activities are more demanding (e.g. a professional voice user), or who use their voices for unique tasks (e.g. a voice actor) may have different requirements than people who work in jobs that do not require much speaking, or who are introverted and prefer to socialize less often.
Treatment is not based on the stuttering itself, but based on improving how well people can function in their day-to-day lives. For example, a person who can control their stutter using fluency shaping strategies may not stutter during a presentation, but may experience severe anxiety about whether or not they will lose control of their speech. A person who stutters heavily during a presentation but is not made anxious or uncomfortable by their stuttering may not feel impacted at all by their stuttering, even if an evaluation would determine that they have a severe fluency disorder.
The WHO ICF itself can be accessed at https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/icfbeginnersguide.pdf?ua=1 for those interested in learning more about this model of care.

Those who stutter may not always stutter in every situation. Though anxiety provoking situations will most often cause someone who sutters to stutter in that moment.  When we are anxious our thinking is not clear and our body may begin to tense up in various areas. With the lack of clear thought and tension this may cause you to sutter as it is more difficult to be mindful of words that are difficult to produce and strategies you typically use to be used in those moments. The added tension which can also occur around the mouth area may also cause you to sutter as your muscles tense up and become difficult to relax.  
 

Accepting verbal communication to include the content, as well as the delivery of your message, then stuttering can affect both. The content, including the main idea, words you choose, and organization structure you use will only be affected if you let it. If you’re distracted from what you want to share by your negative thoughts and perceptions of your stuttering, the clarity of your content can be compromised. Rather, if you are focused on getting your message across, your content will be in your full control. In addition to content, there is delivery– the speech sounds, volume, pitch and overall melody of your voice. Stuttering tends to impact the way you produce sounds, with certain sounds taking longer to realize, and others coming out more than once. Since the sounds themselves stay much the same, intelligibility tends to be at 100%.

You may stutter when stressed as stress has a negative response on your body which may cause anxiety and tension. The tension caused by anxiety can appear in the chest, shoulders, neck, jaw, tongue and/or lips. As stress can cause tension in the body it can also aggravate the stutter that is already there. When someone experiences tension due to stress their muscle movements controlled by the brain moving the areas for speech such as tongue, lips, neck and jaw can become more tense and result in a stutter.  

When you are nervous, your attention is dispersed. A part of your attention may be on the situation at hand, but other parts of it are on self-perceptions, your perception of others’ perception of you, previous negative experiences, and negative thoughts and hypotheses. When your full attention is not on speaking, there is a likelihood that your words will not come out as intended. Moreover, when you’re nervous, your breathing can become irregular, directly impacting the air-contact coordination. Considering that speech is a delicate dance between airflow and interior mouth contact, it requires awareness, control and balance.

News reporter John Stossel is a news reporter who stuttered. News reporter and journalist Byron Pitts also stutter.

Craig Skistimas, also known as Stuttering Craig, the co-founder of ScrewAttack which is  a production company for video games. He is best known for his roles on Death Battle, Top 10, DBX and Sidescrollers. He is also an actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and podcast host.

Stuttering affects around 70 million people worldwide, so yes of course there is going to be a comedian who stutters.  One of the more known comedians who actually got famous for his stutter is named John Melendez  also known as ‘Stuttering John’.  Melendez worked on talk shows, acted in movies and is now a stand up comedian for the “Midnight Joker Comedy Club”.  

One of the best known comedians in the UK named Daniel Kitson also has a stutter.  Some other celebrities that have been known to stutter include: Marilyn Monroe, Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, Emily Blunt, Steve Harvey, Ed Sheeran, Tiger Woods, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, and Elvis Presley.

https://thepresidentialhustle.com/10-famous-people-who-stutter-and-how-they-treated-their-stutter/
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/sites/default/files/FamousPeople.pdf

A few good stuttering GIFs can be found on this website: https://giphy.com/explore/stuttering

Individuals who stutter may use um often for several reasons. First, as um is a filler word, it is used to buy time when speaking. Individuals who stutter may need to buy time as they are searching for words with sounds that are easier to say. This is called avoidance; if an individual has a difficult time with the sound /p/, then rather than saying parent, they might buy time to replace it with an easier word mother. Another reason why stutterers may use um is because it has become a habit. Possibly due to negative experiences of not getting the sound out as intended, there may be some hesitation with speaking. This hesitation could have fostered a habit of saying um.

No, stuttering doesn’t give you ticks. Stuttering can, at times, include physical behaviours that may resemble the types of tics seen in people with Tourettes or other neurological disorders. These types of behaviours, in people who stutter, are called secondary behaviours, and are often caused indirectly by their stutter. 
Secondary behaviours often initially emerge as deliberate strategies to reduce the frequency or severity of stuttering. For example, a person may find that they are stuck in a moment of stuttering, but it resolves when they try some kind of physical bodily movement (such as leaning forwards, scrunching up their face, or clenching their hands into fists). Then, the next time that they stutter, if it again feels uncomfortable or like they are stuck, they may deliberately apply the same strategy (e.g. clenching fists). If this process repeats enough times, the individual may find that the behaviour becomes a habit, and it occurs without deliberate forethought.. 
These behaviours initially feel as though they help reduce the severity or duration of a moment of stuttering, but typically their helpful effects subside over time. Over time, as stuttering remains uncomfortable despite the development of their first secondary behaviour, some people begin to use new behaviours in addition to the first. These behaviours follow the same trajectory as their initial secondary behaviour. In this way, some people end up with noticeable movements (that may resemble tics in their speed and appearance), which no longer influence their speech but which have become automatic habitual responses to their stuttering. 
 

You may hear some people use the term “stammering” to describe their speech characteristics. These people may be from the UK or other places where British English is used, such as India or second-language English speakers in Europe who are primarily exposed to British English.
The term “stammering” is a synonym for “stuttering” in the same way that “pavement” describes a sidewalk or “lift” an elevator. They are simply two different words, used by British and American speakers respectively, to describe the same phenomenon. However, it is always helpful to use the same term as the person that you are speaking with. If someone self-identifies as a person with a stammer, or describes their speech as stammering, use the term back to them.

As speech therapists, we of course have recommendations! While we work primarily with teens and adults, we can help direct people towards books written with a variety of target audiences.
For children:
Ben Has Something To Say, by Laurie Lears, follows a little boy who stutters as he learns to speak confidently (not necessarily fluently!).
When Oliver Speaks, by Saadiq Wicks (who stutters!) and Kimberly Garvin, is about a boy who is afraid to give a presentation because of his stutter.
Steggie’s Stutter, by Jack Hughes, is about a dinosaur who is always interrupted before he can finish speaking.
A Boy and His Stutter, by Alan Rabinowitz, is a memoir of the author’s experience as a boy who stuttered severely, except when he spoke to animals.
Sometimes I just Stutter, by Eelco de Geus and translated into English by Elisabeth Versteegh-Vermeij, is a self-help book for older children who struggle emotionally with their stuttering. It includes letters from children who stutter and letters that the child can give to the people in their life, to explain how they feel and what will help them.
For teens and adults:
Self-Therapy for the Stutterer, by Malcolm Fraser (a guidebook on how to manage a stutter – by a stutterer!)
Out With It: How Stuttering Helped Me Find My Voice, by Katharine Preston (a memoir)
Stuttering: A Life Bound Up In Words, by Marty Jezer (a memoir)
Stuttering: Inspiring Stories and Professional Wisdom, by Taro Alexander, Joel Korte, and Phil Schneider (a compilation of essays about stuttering by stutterers, disability activists and stuttering treatment professionals)
Who Do You See? The Struggles of a Teenager Who Stutters, by Sean George (informative, normalizing the experiences of teens who stutter)
 

If you have not stuttered in childhood but are suddenly beginning to stutter, it may be due to environmental changes affecting your emotional wellness. Stress in professional and social settings may cause this. Moreover, if you are challenging yourself to speak quicker than you typically do, you may be tripping up on your sounds. If those around you are speaking at a fast pace, or you feel under pressure to get your message out at once, you may find yourself having trouble with sounds.

A case report completed by Perino et al (2000) reported that a woman had come into clincin with a migraine and stuttering. The women appeared to not have any other symptoms. The women had also not taken any medications that could cause stuttering and the women and her family reported no emotional trauma that could have triggered a stutter. Researchers  believed that the imbalances of neurotransmitters during a migraine could cause a stuttering episode that disappears once the migraine is over just like the onset of aphasia may also occur and then disappear during a migraine. The reported that they suggest that suttering should be added to the list of neurological systems that may occur when someone experiences a migraine attack.   
Another study Rodriguez-Castro et al (2020) reported that a 16-year old boy had come into the hospital with a headache that was associated with facial and limb tingling and later developed into an intense stutter. Within 10 hours symptoms resolved and 5 months later the boy experiences a similar episode. The study suggests that stuttering also be added to a list of neurological systems that may be caused by a migraine with aura.   
https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1046/j.1526-4610.2000.00025.x
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32141076/
 

There doesn’t seem to be only one person that discovered stuttering but knowing what it is and what causes it developed through time. In the 6th Century Aetius of Amida was a physician who believed that stuttering was caused by the tongue. He recommended division of the frenum and surgery remained popular for the next few centuries. Johan Frederick Dieffenbach (1795-1847) a German surgeon came up with surgery to treat speech defects in which he would cut a portion of the tongue to help release nerves that cause muscle spasms.  In France in 1830 an author named H. de Chegoin believed that people who stutter had tongues that were disproportionate. J.M.G Itard believed that stuttering was caused by muscular debility. This was treated by putting a fork like object in the lower cavity of the jaw to help support the tongue.  Around the same time in New York, Yaes was studying stuttering and he believed that it was caused by spasms in the glottis. Treatment suggested that patients keep their tongue elevated to the upper palate while speaking. Charles Canon Kingsley  (1819- 1875) believed that stuttering could be traced back to conscious or unconscious imitation. He believed that stuttering could also be due to have the upper teeth sit over the lower teeth. For this he recommended dumbbell exercise,  and placing cork on the back of the teeth. He also believed that boxing was the best sport for someone who stutters. Moses Mendlessohn (1729- 1786) believed that the main reason for stuttering was psychological due to too many thoughts colliding in the brain. Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) believed emotions such as bashfulness interrupted the movements of the speech articulators.  Joseph Frank (1911) had many beliefs to the cause of stuttering, one being cerebral lesions and the other sexual excess.  In the late 1800’s stuttering was believed to be a neurosis and treated by psychoanalysis.  In 1898 Sandow believed that stuttering was caused by the dread of speaking or the eagerness to speak. Children might stutter when they have physical discomfort or fear and will be fluent when feeling comfortable and at ease.  In 1908 Steckel described stuttering as fear hysteria, with anxiety neurosis beginning in childhood. 
In the 20th Century stuttering was believed to be a psychogenic disorder. As psychoanalysis was being used for trestement, it was stopped around the 1960’s as it was showing to be ineffective.  Today, it is believed that those who stutter have a neuro physical dysfunction that affects the timing required to produce speech. It has also been found that those who stutter have difficulties coordinating their breath and articulation.  The role of genetics in the last few decades has also been studied. In 2010 Dr. Dennis drayna and his team identified the first three genes for stuttering.     
https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/0689ashamag1.pdf
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/brief-history#:~:text=Genetic%20Research&text=Dennis%20Drayna%20of%20the%20National,first%203%20genes%20for%20stuttering
https://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/history/quesalyaruss.pdf
https://www.aafp.org/afp/1998/0501/p2175.html
 

Stuttering John is a radio personality, actor, and television announcer who is best known for his role on the’ Howard Stern Show’.  Stuttering John also known as John Melendez became popular for interviewing celebrities and asking inappropriate questions while stuttering. John Melendez acquired his stutter from psychological trauma from a young age and was bullied for it throughout his younger years. His big break came when he got an internship for the ‘Howard Stern Show’.   In about 2004 John Meledne z began working for the ‘Jay Leno Show’.

In 2018 Stuttering John began his own podcast ‘The stuttering john podcast’. During this podcast he would make prank calls. He ended up prank calling the white house pretending to be someone else and got sued over a security breach.  In March 2020 it was announced that John Melemdas would be returning to the stage for comedy shows at the Midnight Joker Comedy Club.
Howard Stern’s Melendez to take over Midnight Joker Comedy Club

Bruce Willis, from classics like Pulp Fiction and the Die Hard series
Samuel L. Jackson, from Django, the Avengers, and Coach Carter
James Earl Jones, known for his voice acting in Star Wars as Darth Vader, and Lion King as Mufasa 
Marilyn Monroe, from 1950s classics like Some Like It Hot, The Prince and the Showgirl, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Elvis Presley, The King of Rock & Roll, from Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, and Blue Hawaii
Nicole Kidman, from Practical Magic, Moulin Rouge, and Cold Mountain
Emily Blunt, from The Devil Wears Prada, Looper, and A Quiet Place