AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRAGMATIC FEATURES IN THE LANGUAGE PRODUCTS OF HIGH-FUNCTIONING AUTISTIC INDIVIDUALS: A CASE-STUDY IN THE USA

Abstract

One of the most universal traits of high functioning autistic people is thedifficulty in language production. This creates several problems for autistic people when interacting with neurotypicals, putting them at risk of being discriminated against and misunderstood (Asperger, 1991). However, little has been done on this phenomenon, as most previous research on language of autistic people only produced results based on experiments in artificial environments (Fine, Bartolucci, Szatmari, & Ginsberg, 1994; Mitchell, Saltmarsh, & Russell, 1997; Surian, Baron Cohen, & Van der Lely, 1996). Moreover, the subjects of these studies were almost always autistic children and adolescents, leaving a gap in the literature which is the language of autistic adults. Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the pragmatic features in the spoken and written language products of high-functioning autistic people, through the case study of Christian Weston Chandler (CWC), a high functioning autistic man who did not receive proper treatment for his autism throughout his life. Specifically, this study attempted to identify the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC’s spoken and written language and examined the connections between CWC’s spoken and written language. Based on the Discourse Analysis method (Salkind, 2010), the data from 37 phone calls and 290 emails between CWC and several different neurotypicals were qualitatively analyzed. These phone calls and emails were analyzed separately in order to identify the main features of CWC’s spoken language and written language. CWC’s spoken language were then compared with his written language in order to examine the connections between his spoken and written language. The findings suggested that both CWC’s spoken and written language shared two main features: The first is the mismatch between the non-literal utterances in the neurotypicals’ statements and the literal utterances in CWC’s responses, and the second is the conformation of the responses to the intention behind the neurotypicals’ statements. However, the literal - non-literal conformation was more apparent in written texts than in spoken texts, and the literal – non-literal mismatch was more apparent in spoken texts than in written texts. Furthermore, there was a connection between CWC’s level of stress and the increase of the literal – non-literal mismatch in CWC’s spoken language, while there was no such increase in his written language. There are also two other features, each of which was unique to either CWC’s spoken or written language. They are the tendency to repeat theneurotypicals’ statements word-by-word (in spoken language), and the tendency to group multiple responses to the neuropicals’ statements into one paragraph without clarifying which statement was being addressed (in written language). However, there was a few instances in CWC’s written language when he also repeated the neurotypicals’ statements, and this tendency was somewhat linked to the decrease in grouping tendency in CWC’s response – that is – CWC was more likely to separate his responses with ordinal adverbs or numbers if the neurotypicals also did the same in their emails. Overall, although there were instances when CWC’s responses conformed to the intention behind the neurotypicals’ statements, the frequency of this happening was low and inconsistent. Thus, it is advisable for teachers, medical staff, social workers and the general public to limit the use of non-literal utterances when communicating with high-functioning autistic people. During communication, they should express their point as clear and concise as possible. It is also necessary that they should not assume bad intention from high-functioning autistic people when miscommunication occurs. Medical staff and social workers can also refer to the results of this study to create a framework for effective methods of treatment and assistance for high-functioning autistic people.