The first publication from the project has recently been published in the journal ‘Applied Linguistics.’ You can read the article for free here.
We are pleased that our article has been featured in ‘Audidacts’. Audidacts is an online database of autism research “published by autistic people, or by non-autistic individuals in response to expectations expressed by autistic people.”
An overview of the paper
Title: Discourse-based approaches to autistic focussed interests: Understanding shared focus, mutual accommodation, and multimodal expression
Authors: Jessica Aiston, Nelya Koteyko, Martine van Driel
Plain language summary
When autistic and non-autistic people interact, they may not always understand each other. This is partially due to the ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, Gurbuz, and López 2022). So, linguistics researchers should try to address this problem, so everybody can interact in more positive and equal ways.
In this paper, we review previous research into autistic communication. We argue that future research must be participatory (including autistic people as researchers and collaborators), affirm neurodiversity (not autistic deficits), and try to address the ‘double empathy problem.’ In addition, linguists should research the role of intense interests in interaction. This includes interactions between autistic people, and between autistic and non-autistic people.
Finally, we suggest some specific areas for new research. For example, researchers could look at how people share focus on interests, or if people change how they speak when talking about their interests to someone from a different group (known as ‘accommodation’ in linguistics). Researchers could also examine ‘multimodality’ in interest-driven interactions – for example the sorts of stims, gestures or facial expressions people make when talking about interests. Overall, linguists need to make sure our research brings positive impact for autistic communities.
