The issue of identity in literature and movies has been mainly discussed from the perspective of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, but in this paper we would like to approach the issue from the perspective of disability. According to Lennard Davis, Disability Studies, which is related to social, cultural, and political factors and issues, started to be recognized as a field of academic study in the 1970s. In this still-developing field, speech and language disorders, which are sometimes problematic in being defined as disabilities, have not been discussed enough, compared to the visible physical disabilities. Especially, stuttering has been portrayed in stereotypical terms for many years. However, there is a growing interest in the portrayal of speech and language disorders in popular culture, and in particular several movies in recent years have explored them from new perspectives. These movies show more realistic portrayals of characters with speech and language problems, such as stuttering, and they have raised people’s awareness about the status of the self in relation to these problems. The purpose of this study is to explore the variety of stereotypes concerning people who stutter in movies and how this is changing, which will lead us to reconsider the socially constructed status of the “normal” speaker.
