Protected: 1: Language Otherwise: Neurodivergent Justice, Materialities, and Mutuality

Panellists: Eleonora Marocchini, Gerald Roche, Anouk Hoogendoorn
Chair: Nicola Simonetti

Eleonora Marocchini | Decentering autism in cross-neurotype communication research and discourse: welcoming neurodivergent pragmatics 

Abstract: Linguistics, although rooted in humanities, draws heavily on psychological disciplines when studying neurodivergent communication. In fact, while research on linguistic pragmatics in neurotypical people focuses on co-construction of meaning and conversations (as well as textual and sociodemographic aspects), neurodivergent speakers are confined into the normative and pathologizing frameworks of clinical pragmatics (Marocchini, 2023).  

The first wave of neurodiversity studies has expanded on Milton’s (2012) double empathy problem, enabling a reframing of the so-called deficits in autistic pragmatics as a mutual misunderstanding process in communication between autistic and non-autistic people (Williams et al., 2021). This was an important step to challenge neurotypical domination of knowledge and practice in communication. However, a truly critical turn in neurodiversity theory and research should address the new processes of cognitive othering that neurodiversity-lite accounts of neurodivergent communication are recreating towards non-autistic neurodivergent people in both academic and social spaces. 

Embodying a neurodivergent positionality against epistemic injustice should mean decentering dominant perspectives (Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Stenning, and Chown, 2020) rather than creating a new center within the margins. Nevertheless, this can be seen in the excessive narrowing of “cross-neurotype communication” into an ad hoc concept for “communication between autistic and non-autistic people”, and of “neurodivergent communication” into an ad hoc concept for “autistic communication”, where neurodivergent communication is said to be characterized by a tendence to literal interpretation and monologuing, while clinical pragmatics frames any form of neurodivergent communication as impaired. 

In an attempt to “centralize marginality” (Holling, 2018; hooks, 1984), as a multiply neurodivergent linguist, I will try to critically analyze a foundational handbook of Clinical Pragmatics (Cummings, 2009) and offer a neuroqueer reading of all the main communicative features and practices that are described as pragmatic impairments for both developmental and acquired neurodivergence, including DLD, ADHD, intellectual disability, schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury, and neurodegenerative conditions.

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Gerald Roche (Online) | Five Key Concepts for Autistic Linguistic Justice 

Abstract: A key part of being autistic is that we communicate differently from the vast majority of people around us. Although a range of new perspectives have emerged in recent years, dominant approaches to autistic communication in academia continue to pathologize our distinct communication styles. In this presentation I hope to promote a new approach to this issue, drawing on both my lived experience as an autistic person and my academic expertise as an anthropologist who researches language and power. I refer to the approach that I promote as ‘autistic linguistic justice.’ Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s Marxist, feminist vision of social justice, autistic linguistic justice aims to explore potential processes of redistribution, recognition, and representation that will enable autistic communication styles to be widely accommodated, rather than stigmatized. To foster discussion of what ‘autistic linguistic justice’ might look like and how it might be achieved, I introduce five concepts from the interdisciplinary study of language. Specifically, I introduce: the sociolinguistics of securitization; language revitalization; linguistic human rights; language policy and planning; and language ethics. Each concept will be briefly introduced, and examples given of how they can be applied to achieving autistic linguistic justice. In order to facilitate further work in this area, I will conclude by discussing the need for building respectful relationships with other linguistically minoritized communities, based on solidarity and mutual aid.

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Anouk Hoogendoorn | Movements in Proximity: A social and material approach to linguistic practices 

Abstract: I present an artistic and performative approach to practices of sharing called Movements in Proximity. Here, I try to understand forms of communication between peers and different forms of linguistic expression beyond neurotypical parameters. I understand language as the experience of a quality moving into articulation, be it on paper, in air, or otherwise. This situated perspective brings together disability, queer, and trans perspectives to linguistic practices through and with art. Perceived linguistic ability has been the metric and method of dehumanization, conferring knowledge, communication, agency, intention, and sociability. This narrow understanding of language is also flawed because it understands language simply as a mental, rather than a social phenomenon, one with a rich materiality. Moreover, interacting with our surroundings exceeds any form, be it language, what we consider thought, and particularly what we see as human (Baggs, 2007). The articulate voice is seen as the goal and means to reach empowerment (Smilges, 2022), negating the multiplicitous character of expressions in everyday life such as touch or gesture. How can rather the material and embodied qualities of language be understood and researched? I understand the material here in twofold: both the socio-political dimension, informed by (neuro)queer and disability studies rooted in Marxist theory, and the artistic dimension, informed by my practice-based research in textile and performance. My research counters intersubjective and transactional ideas of learning that are rooted in forms of oppression that often still linger in the conditions for sharing in artistic and academic settings. I argue that a collective approach to learning and sharing challenges ableist conceptions of language and knowledge. 

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Speaker Bios:

Eleonora Marocchini: Eleanor is a neurodivergent linguist and an independent researcher in Social Sciences at the Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE). She obtained her PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Genova in 2022. While writing her PhD thesis on empathy and pragmatic communication in autism, she got in contact with critical works in Disability and Neurodiversity Studies, as well as Science and Technology Studies, challenging traditional and pathologising approaches to cognitive diversity. As a result, she left traditional academia and started conducting independent research while working as a freelance communicator and consultant.

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Gerald Roche: I am a political anthropologist who researches a range of issues related to language and power, and am currently Lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University, Australia. I have conducted research, advocacy, and organizing related to language oppression, language revitalization, language rights, and hate speech. I have recently published a book with Cornell University Press (The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet), and my academic articles have appeared in Annual Review of Anthropology, State Crime Journal, Global Social Challenges Journal, American Anthropologist, and other venues. My public-facing writing has appeared in the Nation, Jacobin, and elsewhere. I am autistic.

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Anouk Hoogendoorn: Anouk is an artistic researcher, who is currently doing a practice-based PhD at Teesside University, UK and Zurich University of the Arts, CH. They were formely part of PEERS ’22/’23 (pre-PHD) at Zürich University of the Arts, studied Artistic Research (Research MA) at the University of Amsterdam and Image and Language (BFA) at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Anouk has an artistic practice that always has an important collaborative and experimental orientation to it. The (spoken) texts, textile works, sketches, movements, and sounds that come out of this are moments of processes rather than presentations fixed once and for all.

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Meeting ID: 917 7221 6021

Passcode: 912787