How Speaking Shapes Person and World: Analysis of the Performativity of Discourse in the Field of Disability (original) (raw)
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This paper investigates the rhetoric surrounding disability, specifically focusing on how such rhetoric is deployed in legislative texts which attempt to promote the equality of people with disabilities throughout society. In criticizing “disease-centric discourse” within legislative texts the paper argues that there is a gap between what is “spoken” and what is “said” in current state-based actions which attempt to pragmatically secure equality. In order to bridge this gap, the paper focuses on the “rhetorical structure” of language within a vacuum, utilizing the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche in explanation of reason in grammatical structure. Ultimately, utilizing Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “over-signification” the paper concludes with the advocacy of traversing the grammatical reasoned structure of the predicate/subject dichotomy which disease-centric discourse is founded upon, and employing a method of performative engagement in the “singing” of people first language when advancing pragmatic actions toward equality.
Val Williams, Disability and Discourse: Analysing Inclusive Conversation with People with Intellectual Disabilities, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011; 257 pp., US$49.95 (pbk).
Discourse analysis and disability: Some topics and issues
Discourse & Society, 2011
Disability is an underexplored topic in discourse analysis. A stronger emphasis on disability issues would be in keeping with the academic principles and political priorities of critical discourse analysis. Simultaneously, a discourse analysis perspective is needed in disability studies. Although that field has produced a considerable amount of discourse-oriented research, it is structured around theoretical models that appear adversarial and incompatible. In practice, many of the incompatibilities dissolve into divisions between different areas of discourse production. A greater awareness of discourse analysis will aid disability studies, both in terms of theoretical development and in furthering its goals of social change.
Disability, Discourse and Technology
Springer , 2016
Exclusion is the main predicament faced by people with disabilities across contexts and cultures. That is why inclusion is at the heart of disability concerns, both academic and non-academic. Yet, astoundingly, it is one of the least academically studied concepts, especially from the perspective of a person with disability, and particularly regarding how inclusion is accomplished through discourse and technology at the micro level in communication across ability-status. To understand how inclusion works in the real lives of persons with disabilities is to eliminate discrimination that occurs at both interactional and social levels, the former of which is rarely researched. Analyzing the process of inclusion, moreover, sheds insight into the collaborative process of social action. Inclusion is thus pivotal to understanding the nature of disability and human agency and their relationship to language and technology. This book––which integrates past and new research into a single manuscript that addresses critical, timely issues in disability research, answers recent key calls, and, in turn, fills in a number of main gaps in discourse analysis and disability studies. This is indeed the best and the worst of times as far as disability is concerned. Socio-politically, since the financial meltdown and the Arab Spring, the world has been afflicted with continuous, escalating unrest. As persons with disabilities are the first to suffer in dire circumstances (Goodley, 2011), the necessity in such times to research and document the contributions that those with disabilities can make to their own lives and those of others (i.e., to validate their agency) is axiomatic. Academically, there is a burst of new interest and energy in research that deals more intimately with people with disabilities. These studies have been driven by a new wave of disability researchers who demand a new research direction––more ‘non-white’ research, more discursive research, more exploration of personal experiences, and more technologically-oriented studies. This book meets these criteria; it can propel forward this wave of research and push the boundaries of disability studies, a field that is at a crossroads (Watson et al., 2012), but lacks guidance. It knows where it is generally heading; however, it has no inkling about how to get to the desired destination. This is where this book comes in––it shows how to do the research required to demonstrate disability in (inter)action. This book is a qualitative examination with much larger implications. The project builds on and extends a longitudinal, ethnographic case study analysis of the discourse, narratives and use of new media technology of one man with quadriplegia to combat the marginalization and isolation afforded to him by the cultural ideologies towards disability in Oman, the Islamic Arab country in which he resides. The book’s power stems from it being an emic view of how inclusion takes place at discursive and non-discursive levels, using the latest linguistic and multimodal frameworks. The book is based in an Arabian context, but keeps in mind global applications. The in-depth multimodal analysis makes the point that technology is an important resource by which persons with disability can construct agentive identities and negotiate social inclusion, while also demonstrating how this occurs. The book also illustrates the role that language plays in shaping the experience of disability. Collectively, the book illustrates the necessity of going beyond bounded texts when dealing with identities constructed by individuals with disabilities and the need to deconstruct taken-for-granted binary categories of what does and does not constitute disability and ability, normal and abnormal, and so on. This is a book for all: It is for students and academics interested in how to apply linguistics and multimodal research to address real social issues. It is also a book for students and academics in disability studies. It is, moreover, for activists and policy makers in the field of disability. It further is a book for and about persons with disabilities and for anyone interested in a story of human triumph and the power of the soul to overcome all adversity. In many respects, this book is more than a scholarly description of the process of inclusion in the experience of disability. It is a testimony to the life lived by a close friend of mine and a research participant who I met in 1994. It archives his daily struggles and triumphs and his family’s role in doing the best they can, given the limited resources they have. It also records the role played by a Middle Eastern country in striving, albeit sometimes failing, to implement the belief that disability is not just a biomedical problem; it also is a social cause. Most importantly, the book documents the agency that a person with a disability, who seemingly has no power, exercises and his creative and visionary side. This process actually changed him as a person: In 2002, Yahya was a man with a disability ignored by everyone in his close circles. In 2012, he became a scholar––a person with an enlightened identity, whom people online and offline turn to for guidance on matters such as politics, religion and the nature of life. By documenting his decade-long narrative using a systematic, analytical method, I hope it inspires others to reach for the stars. It is further hoped that the book engages in disability studies, motivates academics to investigate inclusion from a multimodal perspective, and inspires students to do academically conscious research that brings about social change.
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.
Disability, Discourse, and Technology – Agency and Inclusion in (Inter)action
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.
Communicating the social: Discourses of disability and difference
Australian Journal of Communication, 2003
Disability studies moves beyond the problematic allocation of the body to the pre-social realm through asserting that disability is a social condition generated by the same types of power relations that give social meaning to colour and gender and sexuality. Disability emerges from a range of social relationships. In this process, discrete disability cultures have been constituted.
Rhetorica, 2018
Rhetoric is an ability. So begins the blithe Englishing of Aristotle's definition of rhetoric. In early translations it appears as a faculty, following the European vernaculars and the Latin translation of Aristotle's dunamis with facultas. Yet even if this translation flattens the complex significance of Aristotle's original sense, it happily brings us within the orbit of pressing problems in our own moment. We may now pose new questions: If rhetoric insists it be thought of as an ability, how might we inflect this idée reçue of the field by thinking through the meaning of rhetoric from a position of disability? This is not a matter of simple inversion. Disability is not the opposite of ability but the suspension of the assumptions of ableism. In this sense, it is like disbelief. We say we are in a 'state of disbelief' precisely when we are presented with incontrovertible evidence that commands assent. Disability rhetoric, then, seeks to illuminate the unreflective assumptions and heuristics that we commonly use to make judgments concerning the conditions and abilities of others. In Disability Rhetoric and Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics, Jay Timothy Dolmage and Shannon Walters offer book-length elaborations of what such a rhetoric might be. The authors do not simply challenge rhetoric about disability or examine disability advocacy rhetorically, although both these aims are crucial to their projects. The authors argue that a thoroughgoing criticism of ableism requires a reexamination of rhetorical history and theory. The classical tradition's inability to think through bodily difference made it narrower than it otherwise might have been. Quintilian asserted that the limits of rhetorical education could be found in the body of the orator, "for assuredly no one can exhibit proper delivery if he lacks a memory for retaining what he has written or ready facility in uttering what he has to speak extempore, or if he has any incurable defect of utterance." Any such "extraordinary deformity of body. .. cannot be remedied by any effort of art" (11.3.10). Unable to think of bodily difference as anything but deformity gave ancient rhetorical theory a
Introduction: A dialogue about dialogue about disability
Disability in Dalogue, 2023
This chapter attunes to dialogue, as we orient to it in our work and spontaneous doings with others. It is a meta dialogue, for in it we find our own utterances and incarnation, emerging and unfolding in the heteroglossia of disability. Our purpose is deconstructive as much as reconstructive, as we want to hear voices of those who speak about dialogue, disability, and the discourses of intelligibility that create our awareness, including that of ourselves. We speak in turns, from proposing a definition of dialogue, to examining the boundaries of disability, disability as social dialogue, and finally, the dialogues between us, as co-editors and academics wary of institutional disablement, that have enabled this book and spoken our words and bodies into being.
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.