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Title : Rethinking language in autism

Lay abstract: Children with autism are known to have difficulty with language, and their speech is often marked by distinctive features, such as repetitions and noncommunicative talk. The dominant view in autism research is that these features reflect the basic impairments that underlie the condition. In this article, we argue that the reality is more complex. We point out that much research on language in childhood autism is based on limited ideas about what language is and how it works, ideas that lead to analyzing the child’s talk without considering the context in which it was produced. What is needed is a perspective on language—and methods of analysis to go with it—that goes beyond the idea that language is a system of symbols we use to convey information. In our argument, we draw on the academic disciplines of linguistic anthropology and Conversation Analysis, which have shown that the essence of language is social action and social interaction, and that we use language to experience the world and each other. Adopting such a multi-dimensional view of language, we argue, has the potential to reveal more agency, interactional ability, and social sensitivity in children with autism than we may otherwise find. At the same time, such a perspective also has important implications for our understanding of autism and how it develops, as well as for efforts to support language development in affected children.