Episode 81 - Jessica Aiston & Eltham Hill School students on the language of neurodiversity

About this episode

This episode features students from Eltham Hill School discussing the language surrounding neurodiversity with Dr. Jessica Aiston.

Welcome to episode 81 of Lexis, a special student takeover edition which features Freya and Miles from Eltham Hill School in South London in conversation with Dr Jessica Aiston, postdoctoral research assistant in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London (and who previously appeared on episode 50 talking about critical discourse studies). The episode is all about the language of, and around, neurodiversity, including: Why this episode exists and why Freya and Miles wanted to record it What we mean by ‘neurodiversity’ and other helpful definitions The neurodiversity paradigm Terms, labels and the history behind these The pros and cons of certain labels The importance of autistic people having agency in the terms being used Semantic reclamation and euphemism cycles Person-first and identity-first terms The importance of autistic people centering themselves and being centered in linguistic research Using the lens of CCritical Discourse Analysis for exploring discourse around autism and neurodiversity Jess’s current work on the Autism in Affinity Spaces project Jess has supplied the following references based on the topics raised in the show: Kenny, L., Hattersley, C., Molins…

People in this episode

Guests: Jessica Aiston, Freya, Miles

Topics covered

• neurodiversity
• language
• autism
• critical discourse analysis
• semantic reclamation
• agency in language

Keywords

• neurodiversity
• autism
• language
• critical discourse analysis
• semantic reclamation
• agency
• labels
• terms

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Eltham Hill School, Queen Mary University of London

Books & works: Episode 50, Autism in Affinity Spaces project, Autism, Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community, "Autism research is in crisis": A mixed method study of researcher

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