AAAL 2026: Invited Colloquium

Betty Yu, San Francisco State University 

The division between language and communication has long been accepted as orthodoxy in studies of language. Communication is construed as broad and basic, and language as bounded and elite. The differentiation is not a neutral one but born of normative constructions that elevate certain idealized languaging practices over others. Theories, research, and practices in child language development are overwhelmingly driven by this ideology of language. Even as theoretical camps differ on how children learn language (whether by innate grammar (Chomsky), imitation of verbal behavior (Skinner), interactional scaffolding (Vygotsky), or intention reading (Tomasello), they more or less agree on what the child ultimately learns – an abstract, internalized, and predefined conventional linguistic system that map on to the linguistic performances of similarly idealized ablebodied adults in their environment. When a person does not language in ways that live up to idealized definitions of language, they are characterized as “languageless” (Henner & Robinson, 2023; Moriarty, 2019). Children who are non-speaking, who have limited/unreliable speech, or who language in unconventional ways are often cast in this light. This study draws on critical disability studies and crip linguistics to interrogate the conceptual division between language and nonlanguage, as well as to deconstruct the associated hierarchical (and often dehumanizing) ranking of practices according to their proximity to normative linguistic standards. It employs the approach of ethnomethodological and conversation analysis (EMCA) to examine routine interactions between non-speaking and minimally speaking autistic children and familiar partners. We argue that the participants’ engagement in embodied, interdependent, multimodal shared meaning making practices are undeniable displays of languaging though they are not often recognized as such by language researchers, educators, or therapists. These findings do not simply signal the need to rethink autistic languaging but carry broader implications for applied linguistics fields to reconsider exclusive and oppressive notions of language. 

Octavian Robinson, The Ohio State University 
 
Our project reframes deaf people’s literacy practices in the United States as transgressive and subversive. Such literacy practices should be described as ASL-inflected English, a natural consequence of multilingualism. Deaf people’s written products reflect linguistic idiosyncrasies that are characteristic of American Sign Language (ASL). These idiosyncrasies are consistent across generations of deaf writers, suggesting an ASL variety of English. Our paper urges scholars to re-assesses deaf signers’ literacy practices through the crip linguistics and translanguaging frameworks. Our data illustrates deaf literacy practices as follows. One practice is to translate ASL into English by using visual connections to print, e.g. using numbers and letters in combination to represent handshapes formed during the signing process such as “5-8” (STICK-MIND) to represent the sign for “remembering”, “8-5-8-5” to represent “gossip worthy news,” or “2-5-8” to represent “very interesting.” Another practice is the usage of ASL written into English where calibration is required to understand phrases such as “dodo store?” or “FINISHHHHH. Koko Jump Hard.” While such phrases may strike a non-signing English speaker as nonsense, they make sense to signers. Such Englishes are forms of language play, showing that deaf people are good at manipulating language, co-constructing meaning, and world building. Deaf people’s usage of ASL-inflected English should be understood as intentional subversive languaging that attends to the politics of literacy and English supremacy among deaf people and within deaf education. Intentional linguistic play in writing with ASL assumes a certain level of calibration between the interlocutors, this assumption relies on the deaf ethos of calibration as part of our communicative practices (Moriarty & Kusters, 2021). Requiring calibration reinforces deaf people’s ethos of communicative competence and relationality while taking agency over our linguistic practices.  

Vishnu KK Nair, University of Reading 
 
In this presentation, I will focus on speech and language therapy (SLT), a rehabilitation field that is often bypassed in debates on disability and applied linguistics. Within SLT, linguistic competence is conceptualized based on developmentalist frameworks that considers oral language as superior to other modalities. Normative assumptions of what counts as ‘good language’ stems from prescriptivist White notions of communication. Construction of ‘communication disorder’ arises within this context where language practices that deviate from White norms are considered as ‘atypical’ and ‘delayed’ and in need of linguistic remediation. These ideological constructions are situated at the intersection of both race and (dis)ability, yet these crucial intersections are often overlooked in research. Critically, notions of linguistic competence also have a geographical intersection where Global Northern researchers disproportionately control power over the construction of disorders or even creation of new labels (e.g., developmental language disorder). Therefore, in addition to race and ableist ideologies, (White) linguistic competence manifests itself as coloniality of power through geo-political imposition of linguistic standards. In a context where competence based linguistic assessments are often adapted into geopolitical South, a disabled (or neurodivergent) child in this location is expected to perform based on the linguistic norms of  Global North and of Whiteness. Through a longitudinal ethnographic study, I will highlight the language practices of a neurodivergent (autistic) child from India that ‘violates’ all assumptions of linguistic normativity. I will argue that the language practices of the neurodivergent child emerges as a set of post human condition that is embodied, non-linear, relational and multidirectional. They are unmeasurable and entangled with more than human actors. This calls for undoing of Global Northern race and ableist ideologies, however, raises critical questions such as how can mainstream applied linguistics reconcile with notions that disrupts linguistic normativity and center linguistic care work and disability justice.     

Usree Bhattacharya, University of Georgia
 

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in systems that mediate everyday language use, influencing how language is produced, interpreted, and circulated across contexts. Yet the communicative practices of many users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) remain largely absent from the data on which these systems are trained. AAC encompasses a range of communicative modalities, including unaided forms such as gesture, facial expression, and sign as well as aided systems including symbol boards and speech-generating devices. For many people with complex communication repertoires, communication unfolds primarily through these modalities.What is missing in current computational pipelines is not merely the presence of ‘AAC data,’ but the representation of the communicative practices through which AAC-mediated interaction occurs. These practices include, among others, navigating core-vocabulary layouts, coordinating motor planning with device layouts, and managing unintended activations. In LLM training pipelines, however, such activity is seldom represented and is typically flattened into textual approximations.

This presentation examines that flattening through selected data drawn from eight years of longitudinal audiovisual qualitative data documenting everyday communication in home settings for a child with Rett syndrome who uses an eye-gaze AAC device. The corpus captures interactional practices through which meaning emerges across bodies, devices, and interlocutors. When read alongside recent computational work on AAC optimization, this flattening becomes visible as a consequence of prevailing assumptions in computational language modeling. Systems designed to support AAC frequently optimize for production models derived from normative patterns of spoken interaction. The longitudinal corpus reveals communicative practices that exceed these operationalizations, making visible how normative assumptions about what counts as legitimate language become embedded in computational infrastructures that flatten forms of languaging into modelable outputs. At stake, then, is a tension between languaging as situated communicative practice and modeling as its computational abstraction.