In an age of polished TED Talks and overconfident political oratory, success seems to depend upon charismatic public speaking. But what if hyper-fluency is not only unachievable but undesirable?
Timely
One of those rare books I hadn’t realised I’d been waiting for until I read it
Open-minded, thoughtful and wise… A liberating book
Jonty Claypole spent 15 years of his life in and out of extreme speech therapy. From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the words he’d always feared: “We can’t cure your stutter.” Those words started him on a journey towards not only making peace with his stammer but learning to use it to his advantage.
Here Jonty argues that our obsession with fluency could be hindering, rather than helping, our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness. Exploring other speech conditions, such as aphasia and Tourette’s, and telling the stories of the “creatively disfluent” – from Lewis Carroll to Kendrick Lamar – Jonty explains why it’s time for us to stop making sense, get tongue-tied and embrace the life-changing power of inarticulacy.
Read an extract from the book
- Date published
- Format
- Hardback
- Extent
- 224 pages
- ISBN
- 9781788161718
About the author
Jonty Claypole
Jonty Claypole is Director of BBC Arts, Chairman of the arts centre HOME in Manchester, and is named in The Bookseller 150, a list of the most influential people in publishing.