Disability and Discourse

2007

This article examines the role and importance of discourse in the field of disability. Based on Austin's contributions to pragmatics, it shows how discourse, being descriptive, prescriptive and embodied, creates differences for individual people. Words define a person's world, body and (dis)abilities. They thus define the way in which this world can (or cannot) be changed through political action and by creating a group. This analysis of discourse leads to the question of the speaker's responsibility: who is allowed to say 'what' and what will the strength and efficacy of his/her discourse be?

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023

Discourses on Disability bridges academic and personal voices from India to address the diverse and fluid conversations on disability. It seeks to critically engage with the concept of being dis/abled, attempting to deconstruct ableism while advocating for inclusive politics. Narratives from people with bipolar disorder, autism, and locomotor disabilities serve to examine how it feels to exist in a world conditioned by deep-seated cultural taboos about disability. The chapters in this book show how India still has a systemic silence about people with disabilities.

Supporting Students with Disabilities in Higher Education - do we have it all wrong?

Nordic Social Work Research, 2019

In Norway, conducting research projects together with people with intellectual disabilities has been rare. This article provides reflections on conducting a pilot project where people with intellectual disabilities prepared a dialogue conference, together with academics, related to participation in everyday life in large shared housing. Two working groups were established and comprised academics, people with intellectual disabilities and staff. The following themes emerged through analysis of data; 'facilitation for safety as support strategy', 'roles and processes in co-production of knowledge' and 'different voices and power'. Experiences and reflections from this pilot project show both tensions and pitfalls when involving people with intellectual disability in research. A key conclusion is that involving people with intellectual disability and staff had an impact, added values and new insights that without their participation would not have emerged.

The cover of Jan Grue’s book »Disability and Discourse Analysis« shows a metal construction that spirals upwards and tapers to a point. This picture visualises in a plain, yet intriguing, manner the intention the author pursues with this monograph: to bring the research fields of disability studies and discourse analysis together. Both fields have not yet found each other, even though they share the same concern: the re/production of social categories that re/produce and re/enforce asymmetric power relations, marginalisation, and discrimination (p. ix/x). Therefore, the book’s main objective is the analysis of disability as a complex phenomenon created in and through language (Chapters 1 and 2), and its effects in different contexts and social environments (Chapter 3 to 6). The book, published by Ashgate as a part of its eight-volume series Interdisciplinary Disability Studies, is characterised by its distinct methodological approach: It focuses both on the current disability discourses and the significance of discourse analysis for disability studies. This approach parallels publications in other fields of minority studies such as gender studies, LGBT studies or post-colonial studies, which also prioritise the study of language. Trying to clarify the relationship between disability research and discourse analysis has not yet been undertaken in the field of disability studies. Neither older nor more recent publications provide an overview of the research on disability discourses or its employable research methods: »The Disability Studies Reader« (Shakespeare 1998), »Disability Discourse: Disability, Human Rights, and Society« (Corker/French 2002), the comprehensive »Handbook of Disability Studies« (Albrecht/Seelman/Bury 2003) or the »Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies« (Watson/Roulstone/Thomas 2012). Grue’s monograph tries to fill this gap by applying a discourse perspective on disability. By discussing the role of language in the social construction of disability, he maps the current area of research on discourses of disability, impairment and discrimination within the field of disability studies.

s Disability, Discourse, and Technology is an original, innovative, culturally rich, and socially inclusive study of disability, rhetoric, and agency in the framework of the technological advancement of the 21st century and its integration in learning experiences. Zidjaly uses an ethnographic lens to look at disability, through the specific case of Yahya, a 46-year-old quadriplegic man from Oman. In the case study, Yahya gradually overcomes adversity and serves as Zidjaly's inspiration for writing the book-a process that began in 2002. Importantly, the book starts with a universally applicable statement about diversity, and more specifically, biases and stereotypes about people with disabilities. The author acknowledges that people with disabilities face discrimination and exclusion across contexts and cultures at both interactional and social levels. Furthermore, the book dispels stereotypical beliefs about people with disabilities, specifically in the Middle East-the geopolitical focus of the case study. It does so by answering important questions about the strong technological skillsets of learners with disabilities, their mastering of language, and the psychological effects of technology-based language learning. The book focuses on the nature and the availability of technological resources for disabled individuals and explores the role of agency and discourse in their learning experiences. In line with the famous work by Alcoff (1991), the author emphasizes a typical problem with agency, that is, that other people often speak on behalf of people with disabilities.

British Journal of Social …, 2007

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2009

Despite the shift from traditional to progressive discourse among disability activists and social science academics, the former remains the dominant discourse of disability. In the present study, we examine how Greek teacher candidates, although being considerably exposed to a progressive discourse during their lectures, represent disability in the context of their disability simulations, which favor traditional discourse. The critical discourse analysis of their written accounts reveals that, in quantitative terms, teacher candidates represent disability by drawing upon both traditional and progressive discourses. Seen qualitatively, however, it appears that progressive discourse is a subjugated discourse, compared with the dominant traditional one.

Purpose: This paper aims to show how an intersubjective view on disablist discourse and practice might craft an egalitarian space from which expert voices on living and working with intellectual impairment could emerge, and attempts to further bridge psychoanalytic and disability studies. Method: The paper shares the view on dispelling the notion that intellectually impaired individuals cannot benefit from psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and speaks to the slow progression of research on intellectual disability psychotherapies. It supports disability researchers' emphasis on moving studies from a third-person reporting style toward counter-hegemonic texts, and explores a way of forefronting impaired individuals' expertise. Results: The discussion shows how subjectivities of both psychotherapist and intellectually impaired patient can intersect – thereby raising previously subdued voices to enable social action for the expression of dissatisfaction, equal (moral) rights, individuality and freedom from disablist practices. Conclusion: Intersubjective work could offer a new way of understanding psychotherapy and research with intellectually disabled individuals differing in degree and manner of impairment; address effects of subaltern voice, marginalisation, disempowerment and defense by equalising therapist–patient power (im)balances; and by virtue of its scientific literature base, provide a contextual clinical account of disability psychotherapy and research as anti-discriminatory political and social processes. ä Implications for Rehabilitation Psychoanalytic intersubjectivity implies that there can be no analytic neutrality unaffected by the therapist's subjectivity, and that ongoing experiences of one's subjectivity are deeply influenced by the subjectivities of those with whom one is interacting. Cautious and thoroughly considered self-disclosure on the part of the therapist in experiencing the patient becomes a permissible therapeutic intervention. In intersubjective research texts, the experience of disability can ultimately be voiced by the real experts living with intellectual impairment in an often disabling world.

The Palgrave Handbook of Adult Mental Health, 2016

Early version, also known as pre-print Link to published version (if available): 10.1057/9781137496850_5 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the author's pre-print. The final published version (version of record) is available online via Palgrave Macmillan at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137496850_5. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher.