Wanted – straight talkers: stammering and aesthetic labour
Butler studies sounding right, the comparatively neglected side of an aesthetic labour literature largely confined to looking good, through men who stammer, and finds in their accounts routine discrimination, by employers and by the men themselves, with reference to a perceived speech-role fit. The data come from self-help group sessions, interviews and short conversations with 36 men from the north of England, the Midlands and south Wales. All said their stammer had affected their employment aspirations, and nearly three-quarters that some roles were out of bounds; two who once declared it on an application form reported getting no further. Men whose fluency had varied consistently reported that it directly affected whether their message was heard and acted upon, including in the same role, and any divergence in speech-role fit, Butler writes, appears to make an audience question whether the message is credible. Just over three-quarters reported agreeing with employers who told them their voice did not fit.
For the men, Butler argues, aesthetic labour is an embodied emotional labour, the effort between what is said and how it is said. Some tried to offset the drive to sound right by building knowledge beyond their colleagues', to be right even if they did not sound right; others valued their listening, and one civil servant, asked by his manager to stay away from key meetings because his speech upset their flow, called it listening capital. Such traits were often described as female. The stated limits: 36 participants, self-selected from stammering groups and events, which may bias the sample towards men more concerned about, or more accepting of, their stammer; men only, neglecting themes that might be specific to women who stammer; an exploratory study of what Butler acknowledges is an extreme group, though examining extremes, the paper argues, may expose practices less easily seen, or heard, in other groups. Read from the accepted manuscript. The paper concerns employment, not psychological safety; the bridge is ours. We read speech-role fit as one way the same words carry different weight from different speakers, and the men's frequent agreement that they did not fit as exclusion taken on by those it excludes, which, Butler notes, will challenge any policy.
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