Yunyi Hu, Thomas Law
Stuttering was more likely to occur in code-switched utterances than in Cantonese-only utterances. Interestingly, stuttering is predominantly associated with the base language, Cantonese, and not with the switch points (English), indicating increased cognitive-linguistic demands during speech planning, not just during production.
PURPOSE: Code-switching is a common phenomenon in bilinguals, but its study in the context of bilinguals who stutter (BWS) remains limited. This preliminary study aims to investigate whether code-switching behaviors contribute to the moment of stuttering in adult bilinguals who stutter.
METHOD: 23 Cantonese-English bilingual adults who stutter participated in the study. Natural conversational speech was elicited through a standardized series of questions. The utterances were categorized into 4 types: fluent Cantonese only, stuttered Cantonese only, fluent code-switched utterance and stuttered code-switched utterances.
RESULTS: The results showed that 78% of the utterances contained code-switching, all of which was intrasentential code-switching. Stuttering was statistically more likely to occur in code-switched utterances than in Cantonese-only utterances. Within code-switched stuttered utterances, 90.57% of stuttering moments occurred in Cantonese words and only 9.43% in English words that were code-switched.
CONCLUSION: Stuttering was more likely to occur in code-switched utterances than in Cantonese-only utterances. Interestingly, stuttering is predominantly associated with the base language, Cantonese, and not with the switch points (English), indicating increased cognitive-linguistic demands during speech planning, not just during production.