Can a dental malocclusion contribute to a stammer?

Zipalta

Hi, there… got a bit of a question about my own difficulty with speech…

If your jaws don't line up as they should, can this contribute to a stammer or lack of fluency in speech? I have a problem with fluency and have always wondered if the oral 'misalignments' that stem from my malocclusion exacerbate this.

If you can bear with me, I've got a bit of a theory about this which I'll entwine with a description of my bite…

My lower jaw is slightly too far forward. This means that when I close my teeth together the biting edges of my front teeth meet; the upper teeth don't overlap and sit in front of the lower teeth as they should. My front teeth obviously don't overlap vertically either. Add to this the fact that I have longer than average front teeth and I suppose you could describe my bite as a rather 'tall' occlusion.

All of this seems to mean that the physiological rest position of my lower jaw is displaced – relative to the roof of my mouth – somewhat downwards and further forwards from where it should be if everything were in proper alignment. By my reckoning, this must mean that my tongue – at rest – must also be displaced forwards and downwards; after all, the tongue is attached to, and sits in, the lower jaw.

What has any of this got to do with fluency in speech, well here's my – possibly entirely nonsensical – theory. Speech seems to involve the tongue moving and shaping itself to affect the flow of air between it and surfaces in the upper part of oral cavity. If your tongue has to move to these positions from a rest position that is displaced from the norm, then surely it's going to have to move further and undergo greater distortion. The tongue is a muscle and my understanding of biology would suggest to me that the more a muscle moves the greater the exertion and strain it experiences. This might not be very much for any one particular sound but multiply it over the considerable number involved in a passage of speech and it must add up to a good deal more effort.

If I'm right about this additional effort and strain in producing speech, could this be part of what's behind the build up of tension in my mouth that goes some way to disrupting my fluency?

Probably not unrelated to this, there does seem to be a link between jaw misalignments and phonetic speech problems. In quite a number of cases where people have had their jaws realigned through surgery a lisp they had has disappeared. Often, the misalignments are a more severe form of those I have: lower jaw even further forwards, much greater opening of the bite, or both.

Jaw, and thus tongue repositioning, must make previously unobtainable clear, consistent, pronunciation possible for these people. So I wonder if there is anything in my theory on the difficulty of getting the tongue into position if it's misaligned to begin with? Could a similar physical factor exacerbate a stammer?

Ps. I should point out that my jaw misalignment isn't really noticeable until you actually look at my teeth. So don't have any pangs of pity; I'm not hideously deformed or anything!

Stephen P

Interesting post, I've never heard of a stammer being caused or otherwise by misalignment of the jaw. There are numerous possibles caused of a stammer but I don't think a misalignment of jaw would be one of them. Is there anyone else in your family with a stammer? In a lot of people a stammer is passed on through the family.
When you stammer does your tongue do much or does it feel like your jaw is stopping it from carrying out its purpose?