Stuttering And Language Analysis

Stuttering is a disorder affecting fluency of speech, through interruption of the flow of speech by certain obstacles; repetitions, prolongations, blocks, interjection and others, negative reaction of the speaker to these interruptions inform of avoidance and struggle, and negative reaction of the listener to these interruptions which cause variable degrees of dys-prosody with the resultant poor intelligibility of a speech ]1[.

Although a variety of theories have been proposed to explain its etiology, the exact cause of stuttering is still unknown ]2[. The relation between stuttering and language is especially intuitive in young children. Several scholars have noted that stuttering onset, typically between ages 2 and 4, coincides with the critical

Research concerned with the phonological aspects has provided evidence that stuttering is increased as a function of language complexity ]6, 7[.

A simple but functional definition of pragmatic is simply known as that it is the language use or the set of sociolinguistic rules one knows and uses in determining who says what to whom, how, why, when, and in what situation ]9[.

Swiney ]10[ indicated by his clinical observations of children and young adults who stutter, that both often have situational speaking fears associated with their fluency disorder, and that they also. What was not expected, however, is the frequency that these speakers exhibit pragmatic weakness as well. This coincides with reports by Blood and Seider ]11[ who indicated that 68% of the CWS have at least one concomitant

]14[ declared that CWS have significantly lower total language score with a significant deficient in the pragmatic skills compared to fluent children.

Although, there are many studies were concerned with the relation between stuttering behaviors and the pragmatics language in CWS, absence of sufficient information concerning the relation between stuttering severity and pragmatic language development especially in the Arabic speaking societies was the motivation to design this study.

This research aimed to study the relationship between stuttering severity, and pragmatic language development in the Egyptian Arabic-speaking CWS to uncover part of the mysterious association between language and stuttering.

Patients and Methods

Patients

This study is an analytical cross-sectional study that was carried out at the Phoniatrics unit (El-Demerdash hospital), Ain Shams University hospitals and (El-Zahraa hospital), Al Azhar University, between October 2016 and May 2017. 60 Egyptain CWS in the age range between 4y.1m.1d. - 9y.12m.31d., and were divided into 3 age groups, as follows:

• Group I: 4y.1m.1d. - 5y.12m.31d.

• Group II: 6y.1m.1d. - 7y.12m.31d.

• Group III: 8y.1m.1d. - 9y.12m.31d.

A convenience sample was used to select the participants upon the following inclusion and exclusion