ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to develop an understanding of ‘communication disablement’ from the standpoint of a person with speech impairment. It argues that, with respect to the taken for granted and negotiated choreography of everyday life, temporal norms disadvantage people with speech impairment. The choreography of communication has produced a context for embodied action in which people with speech impairment are framed as being ‘out of time’ and ‘out of step’ and so credited with little or no communicative capital. The choreography of the temporal domains tends, therefore, to reinforce the exclusion and estrangement of people with speech impairment. Embodied norms of communication are oppressive to people with speech impairment as they are exclusively informed by and reflect the needs of non-impaired bodies. From a phenomenological standpoint, people with speech impairment are not only policed by the ‘formal’ organisation of time, they are also policed by ‘informal’ everyday temporal rules into unsatisfactory interactions.
