On Thursday, April 14th, the Center for Writing Studies was pleased to host Pamela Saunders and Katherine Flowers as they presented their work at the Graduate Student Colloquium (one of the requirements to receive the CWS Concentration—MA and PhD candidates: learn more here!).
“The Risky Rhetorical Performance of Autism Disclosure in Higher Education,”
Pamela Saunders
Saunders presented a case study of one of her research participants. Saunders argues that Mike, a communications major at a university who is on the Autism Spectrum, demonstrates a keen awareness of kairos when it comes to when and why to disclose his diagnosis. In their conversations, Mike reveals his awareness of time, and the contradictory ways he refers to time, manages his time, plans his disclosures strategically, and considers his own ability to maintain hyperfocus for long periods of time a sort of ‘autistic superpower.’ Saunders points out that this reveals an unfortunate assumption in popular and scholarly notions of the role of time in the lives of people with ASD. Assuming that people with an ASD diagnosis cannot manage time, are not aware of time, or complete tasks more slowly than neurotypical people do leads to a generalization that people with an ASD diagnosis are offered the accommodation of “time-and-a-half.” Mike rejects these notions by withholding his diagnosis from those who might make such assumptions. Additionally, he is aware of the ways his diagnosis might be leveraged as an asset when he is seeking employment in the private sector, and plans to disclose at that time. Saunders parsed Mike’s complex rhetorical work in these situations to demonstrate that Mike’s ASD does not leave him “mind-blind” or unaware of his social surroundings. She argues that schools, communities, and employers would do well to reconsider the assumptions made about people with ASD and their rhetorical capabilities.
"Resisting and Rewriting Local English-Only Policies"
Katherine Flowers
Flowers presented data from one community she studied during her fieldwork on local English-Only ordinances. This community passed an English-Only ordinance to later repeal it, and Flowers gathered data during the repeal process. In analyzing the language of the ordinance and the language used by those organizing and speaking for its repeal, Flowers finds that both sides of the monolingualism debate rely on similar ideologies about language and literacy, and so also employ similar strategies in their rhetoric and activism. While she argues that this is important in the ways it reveals our limitations in changing the monolingualism debate itself, she does not believe that it “ideological purity” should be the most important goal for anti-monolingual movements. Instead, Flowers argues, her findings can be used by writing studies scholars who want to research and intervene in language policy conversations. She hopes for more translingual and multilingual orientations in future debates.
