AAAL 2026: Invited Colloquium
Convened by Usree Bhattacharya and Sara E.N. Kangas
Disability Studies and the Deconstruction of Linguistic Normativity
Conveners:
Usree Bhattacharya, University of Georgia
Sara E.N. Kangas, Lehigh University
Sara E.N. Kangas, Lehigh University
Discussant:
Suresh Canagarajah, The Pennsylvania State University
Colloquium Abstract
Despite the emergence of criticality in applied linguistics, the field often operates within prescriptive and narrow frameworks when engaging with issues of disability, privileging certain ways of languaging while marginalizing others. Disability studies offers a transformative theoretical intervention to this tendency by exposing how linguistic normativity functions as a regulatory mechanism that shapes what counts as legitimate language knowledge, use, and development. This colloquium brings together scholars examining how ableism permeates linguistic normativity, operating across multiple dimensions of language education, research, and theory while imagining alternative paradigms that embrace the full spectrum of human communication.
Scholarship presented in this colloquium will challenge fundamental assumptions about “language” versus “communication,” critiquing how such distinctions create hierarchies that devalue certain complex languaging practices. Drawing on theoretical lenses from disability studies, the presentations collectively interrogate how normative constructions of language competence are embedded in ableist, racialized, and colonizing frameworks. From exploring the communicative practices of non-speaking autistic children in intimate interactions to analyzing ASL-inflected English as intentional resistance against linguistic supremacy, these presentations illuminate how disability studies can powerfully reframe our understanding of language itself.
By centering disability justice, this colloquium invites a radical reimagining of applied linguistics that honors embodied, multimodal, and “transgressive” languaging practices typically relegated to the margins. Taken together, the presentations argue for moving beyond accommodation toward recognition of multiple linguistic normativities and a more expansive, inclusive understanding of human communication that resists hierarchical valorization.
What it means to have “no language”
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.
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.
Textual Resistance: Rejecting linguistic supremacy through transgressive writing practices
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.
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.
Linguistic competence and communication disability: A Global Southern Perspective
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.
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.
Communicative competence and neurodivergence: Challenging ableism in language learning and teaching
Jennifer Phuong, Swarthmore College
Prominent in language teaching, communicative competence (CC) broadly refers to one’s capacity to develop and use language within social contexts, often based on orientations to communicative norms in such contexts. It is only more recently that scholars within (applied) linguistics have begun to question and problematize notions of competence, including as it pertains to race (e.g., Flores & Rosa, 2022). Conversely, disability studies scholars have long explored how social, political, and interactional contexts mediate what forms of communication and which individuals and communities are considered (in)competent (Dindar et al., 2017; Winkler, 1999), arguing for multiple normativities (Shuhan, 2015). Normativity ultimately drives notions of linguistic difference and enforces ableism, or “a system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness” (Lewis, 2022). Lewis also argues that one does not have to be identified as disabled to experience ableism, pointing to how systems of oppression converge to position certain individuals and communities as not normal and thus deviant. For this paper, I am specifically interested in neurodivergence as a form of perceived deviance, which often means that neurodivergent language users are excluded from conceptualizations of language.
This paper will put communicative competence in conversation with neurodivergence within both applied linguistics and disability studies through the lens of Crip Linguistics (Henner & Robinson, 2023), Disability Studies (Danforth & Gabel, 2016), and critical disability raciolinguistic perspective (Cioè-Peña, 2021). This includes a review of the concept of communicative competence over time and drawing from notions of competence and normativity emerging from Disability Studies, as well as literature on neurodiversity and neurodivergence. To conclude, I will highlight how these insights can help to challenge ableism and to consider theories of social change.
Prominent in language teaching, communicative competence (CC) broadly refers to one’s capacity to develop and use language within social contexts, often based on orientations to communicative norms in such contexts. It is only more recently that scholars within (applied) linguistics have begun to question and problematize notions of competence, including as it pertains to race (e.g., Flores & Rosa, 2022). Conversely, disability studies scholars have long explored how social, political, and interactional contexts mediate what forms of communication and which individuals and communities are considered (in)competent (Dindar et al., 2017; Winkler, 1999), arguing for multiple normativities (Shuhan, 2015). Normativity ultimately drives notions of linguistic difference and enforces ableism, or “a system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness” (Lewis, 2022). Lewis also argues that one does not have to be identified as disabled to experience ableism, pointing to how systems of oppression converge to position certain individuals and communities as not normal and thus deviant. For this paper, I am specifically interested in neurodivergence as a form of perceived deviance, which often means that neurodivergent language users are excluded from conceptualizations of language.
This paper will put communicative competence in conversation with neurodivergence within both applied linguistics and disability studies through the lens of Crip Linguistics (Henner & Robinson, 2023), Disability Studies (Danforth & Gabel, 2016), and critical disability raciolinguistic perspective (Cioè-Peña, 2021). This includes a review of the concept of communicative competence over time and drawing from notions of competence and normativity emerging from Disability Studies, as well as literature on neurodiversity and neurodivergence. To conclude, I will highlight how these insights can help to challenge ableism and to consider theories of social change.