The Kings Speech

Last weekend our family met in Dublin to see a very remarkable film, The Kings Speech.

It really illustrates the nature and results of speech therapy. The would be king and later the king that had a terrible speech issue of dysfluency or as he put it "stammering". This movie outlines several techniques that were totally off the wall at the time.

It is now very much a part of what we do to help people with this issue. The king actually gets considerably better at the end of the movie.

Lack of Air

One of the major problems that suffers of this malady feel is a general lack of air. They feel that they have run out of air to talk and therefore cannot do it. This leads to a panic feeling on their part and makes the issue worse.

My methodology was to give the people a sense of using diaphragmatic breathing (breathing from the lower torso area instead of the shoulder area).

Delayed Auditory Feedback

The first technique used in the film was to run another set of auditory stimuli in the ears while attempting to speak. This works well for some people as they use Auditory feedback devices (small hearing aid like appliances that attach to the ear and delay back to the ear) what the person has said. These are rather expensive, but some people they represent the only way that they can distract themselves from focusing on the delays. The king found out that he could talk relatively fluently when the orchestra sounds were in his ears. This is what really allowed him to commit the therapist.

Stretching out the Vowels Sounds

I always worked with my clients to talk by elongating their vowels. This works on several levels. If you are elongating your vowels as you speak, you are not focusing on the trouble sounds that always seem to be in the consonants. It also slows the speech down so that adequate lung power is there.

Air In Front of Troubled Sounds

The third technique that was demonstrated by the king but not highlighted in the movie was the use of soft onset. A bit of air can be released just before a tricky sound and the tricky sound will glide into production.

An interesting part of the movie revolved around the reason for the stuttering to begin. The king said that he was traumatized when he was learning to speak by his nanny and her bumping him on her knee. Sue's research supports this hypothesis. I think that his brother had a lot to do with maintaining and making things worse for the king when it came to self correction.

Sue really enjoyed the king references and the historical aspects of deposed king and the Wallace Simpson stuff. Heather and Linzi enjoyed the acting of Colin Fith.
Overall its a remarkable film.

It opens (finally) in Merced on Friday. It will surely by a nominee for the Academy of Arts. Its a little too bad that it is so slow in its distribution. It came out in November in the big cities. Last week it was in cities that had movie theaters that had at least 16 screens.(Stockton, Dublin,Fresno) This week it finally hits the sticks.

If you get a chance to see it, its worth it. The audience in our showing was very female and older. This could also be that the NFL wild card games were being played at the same time as our showing. Long live the ability to time swipe with a recorder!

:) Pat