Sarah Hand

Growing up with a stammer, surrounded by people who did not speak like me, I began to question the concept of fluency. Why is a stammerer’s speech considered less valid than a fluent speaker’s? Why do stammerers have to conform to standards that were not made for us? What happens if we embrace our stammer?

Deconstructing Fluency explores these questions. It aims to challenge fluency and the emphasis placed on it in society, while encouraging stammerers to break free from expectations of fluency and to embrace their speech as it is.

The project features 400 letterforms animated frame by frame in response to my own mouth as I stammer, questioning expected fluency and typographically visualising a stammer. My Anti-Fluency Cards protest a popular speech therapy tool that enforces fluency. The illustrative cards encourage confidence and acceptance of speech that is often deemed “imperfect”. My campaign, The Fluency Standard, both highlights and disrupts the role of fluency as an unattainable ideal imposed on stammerers.