Performative acts of autism

Relatively little research has aimed to understand autism from an emic perspective. The majority of studies examining the organization of the talk of individuals with autism presume that autism organizes discourse rather than examine ways in which talk itself constructs the notion of autism. This st...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Discourse & society 2012-05, Vol.23 (3), p.259-273
Main Authors: Lester, Jessica N., Paulus, Trena M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autism
Autistic disorder
Children
Conversation
Conversational Analysis
Disabilities
Discourse
Discourse Analysis
Ethnography
Everyday life
Identity
Mentally disabled
Parents
Parents & parenting
Performative utterances
Psychology
Social Closure
Social construction
Sons
Therapists
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Relatively little research has aimed to understand autism from an emic perspective. The majority of studies examining the organization of the talk of individuals with autism presume that autism organizes discourse rather than examine ways in which talk itself constructs the notion of autism. This study explored the meanings of autism performed in and through the talk of the parents of children with autism and their therapists. Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, we report on findings generated from interview data with parents and therapists. Situating this study within a discursive psychology framework, we attend to the ways in which 'normality' and 'abnormality' are performed, drawing upon critical notions of disability, poststructural understandings of discourse, and conversation analysis. We point to the importance of situating the construction of an 'ordered' or 'disordered' body in relationship to the exclusionary practices and policies that individuals with autism and those close to them experience daily.
ISSN:0957-9265
1460-3624
DOI:10.1177/0957926511433457