Comparative analysis of the narrative in the autobiographical stories of people who stutter Summary

Comparative analysis of the narrative in the autobiographical stories of people who stutter Summary

The presented research consists in the comparison of written and oral autobiographical narratives of people who stutter and group of people who do not stutter. The purpose of the study was to identify whether there is a correlation between stuttering and autobiographical narratives, and to determine its potential nature.

The scientific reports presented in the theoretical part indicate the complexity and multifaceted impact of stuttering on the affected person. Taking into consideration the need for increased self-speech control of people who stutter and the complexity of the narrative system, the question was stated about the possible impact of chronic stuttering on the way of constructing a longer narrative statement. The specific objectives were to find out whether there are correlations between stuttering and: - narrative patterns, - types of narrative, - organization of thematic threads, - length of the narrative. The answers to the research questions were sought by confronting the oral and written narratives of people with different levels of speech disfluency (research group) with the same type of narratives of people without speech disorders (control group). Oral and written statements in the same group were also compared to assess whether the differences between the forms were similar in the research and control groups.

The study involved 30 people diagnosed with stuttering and 30 people without speech fluency

disorders. Each person created an oral and written narrative statement in the form of an

autobiography and completed a questionnaire, which was the basis for the characteristics of

the respondents. The group of people who stutter was divided internally according to the level

of severity of the symptoms of disfluency, classifying them as mild, moderate or severe. For

the purpose of analyzing the narrative patterns for autobiographical stories, 5 elements of the

scheme were distinguished in the dissertation: the protagonist, introduction, narrative course,

changes, results. The types of narrative were determined on the basis of the occurrence of

fictional, descriptive and commenting sentences. The collected research material featured

narratives with a predominance of descriptive sentences, with a predominance of commenting

sentences, and descriptive-commenting narratives. In the area of narrative organization, the

research material was analyzed using the method of temporal ordering. On this basis, the

narratives were classified as chronological and non-chronological. A division was also made

into coherent and inconsistent narratives. By combining the category of consistency with the

chronology, the following were obtained: - chronological coherent narratives, - non-

chronological coherent narratives, - chronological inconsistent narratives, - non-chronological incoherent narratives.

The area of narrative length analysis concerned: - average sentence length (number of words in a sentence), - average number of words (number of words in a story), - average number of single sentences (the text was divided into single sentences). The analysis of the average sentence length showed statistically significant differences between the oral and written forms in the research group and between the oral narratives of the research and comparative groups.

On average, sentences in oral statements of stuttering people contained more words than those of not stuttering. The results of comparative analysis of mean word counts turned out to be statistically significant. The mean number of words in the oral and written narratives of the research group turned out to be significantly lower than in the control group. Statistically significant differences were also obtained by comparing the length of the narrative measured by the average number of single sentences within a given group and between the groups. The analysis of the length of the narrative measured by the average number of single sentences showed significantly lower values in the group of people who stutter. The oral forms were more different between the groups.

On the basis of the data obtained, a conclusion was made that people who stutter use different narrative patterns than people who do not stutter. The differences concern the order in which the distinguished elements of the narrative scheme appear, their number and type. Significant differences were noted for the elements "protagonist" and "results", which were less common in the narratives of stuttering people. There were significantly shorter patterns in the oral narratives of this group. The differences between the number of fragments constituting separate elements of the narrative scheme in both forms of expression are statistically significant only in the comparison group. This would point to the conclusion that the oral and written narratives of people who stutter are more similar in terms of the number of elements of the narrative schema than in the comparative group.

The results of the comparative analysis of the narrative within the research group, taking into account the level of the severity of illiquidity, showed no significant differences in terms of:

narrative patterns, types of narratives and consistency. Differences were noted in terms of the

chronology of events between the oral and written forms for people with mild levels of

disfluency. In terms of consistency and chronology between the stories of people who stutter,

differences appeared in incoherent non-chronological narratives.

Significant differences were found between the groups in terms of the types of narration with the predominance of descriptive sentences, and narratives with the predominance of commenting sentences in oral forms. The most common type of oral narrative for people who stutter were narratives with the predominance of descriptive sentences. In the control group, this kind of narrative did not occur at all in the oral form.

In terms of the chronology of narratives, statistically significant differences concerned: - in the group of stuttering people, more frequent non-chronological narratives in oral forms than in written forms, - more frequent in oral narratives of people who stutter than in the comparative group of non-chronological plots. The comparison of narrative coherence of the studied groups showed significant differences: - stuttering people created less coherent narratives than those not stuttering, - oral forms of the comparison group are more consistent than written forms. Taking into account the criterion of consistency and chronology, it was found that: - the group of people who stutter produced significantly less coherent oral and written narratives in a chronological order, - the comparative group, produced significantly less inconsistent oral and written narratives with a non-chronological order, - the group of people who stutter produced, in written forms, significantly more coherent narratives with a chronological order, and in oral forms the narratives were coherent with a non-chronological order.

The results presented in the study proved a significant difference between the selected narrative parameters in the autobiographical stories of people who stutter and the ones who do not stutter. The analysis of the gathered material has allowed to achieve the research goals. It was observed that in the group of stuttering people, the narratives do not differ depending on the severity of the speakers' disfluency in terms of: narrative patterns, narrative categories and coherence. Taking into consideration the criterion of integrity and chronology, there indeed appears to exist differences in narrations between oral and written forms, however exclusively in the group of stuttering people.

Based on the obtained data, it was determined that in the collected statements stuttering was

a feature differentiating the groups and could have had a direct or indirect impact on the

analyzed narrative parameters. The differences between groups, as documented in this work,

form the basis for further research into the mechanisms of narrative formation and the impact

of stuttering. Longitudinal studies to determine whether the narratives of people who stutter

change as therapy progresses would be of particular importance.