Abstract
In this chapter, we examine a clinical feature typically associated with the speech of children with autism: pronoun reversal and avoidance. Children with autism are reported to use the second-person pronoun you or third-person pronoun he/she to refer to themselves, as well as to use the first-person pronoun I to refer to the person addressed. This behaviour is referred to as pronominal reversal. In addition, affected children make frequent use of proper names to refer to self or the addressee and sometimes deploy agentless passive constructions. These speech patterns are referred to as pronominal avoidance. These phenomena are located at the intersection of linguistic and social-relational processes, and as such they constitute a particularly interesting area of investigation. For the study of language acquisition generally, these phenomena reveal language’s social underpinnings, as well as the relationship between language and the development of self. For autism research, atypical pronoun usage offers potential insights about core features of the condition.
On est en presence d’une classe de mots, les «pronoms personnels», qui échappent au statut de tous les autres signes du langage. A quoi donc je se réfère-t-il? A quelque chose de très singulier, qui est exclusivement langagier: je se réfère à l’acte de discours individual où il est prononcé, et il désigne le locuteur. […] La réalité à laquelle il renvoie est la réalité du discours. C’est dans l’instance de discours où je désigne le locuteur que celui-ci s’énonce comme «sujet». Il est donc vrai à la lettre que le fondement de la subjectivité est dans l’exercice de la langue.
(Benveniste, De la subjectivité dans le langage, 1958)
We are in the presence of a class of words, the ‘personal pronouns,’ that escape the status of all the other signs of language. Then, what does I refer to? To something very peculiar which is exclusively linguistic: I refers to the act of individual discourse in which it is pronounced, and by this it designates the speaker. […] The reality to which it refers is the reality of the discourse. It is in the instance of discourse in which I designates the speaker that the speaker proclaims himself as the ‘subject.’ And so it is literally true that the basis of subjectivity is in the exercise of language.
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Recommended reading
• Chiat, S. (1986). Personal pronouns. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds.), Language acquisition: Studies in first language development (pp. 339–355). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press.
• Sterponi, L., de Kirby, K., & Shankey, J. (2015). Rethinking language in autism. Autism, 19(5), 517–526.
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© 2015 Laura Sterponi, Kenton de Kirby, and Jennifer Shankey
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Sterponi, L., de Kirby, K., Shankey, J. (2015). Subjectivity in Autistic Language: Insights on Pronoun Atypicality from Three Case Studies. In: O’Reilly, M., Lester, J.N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_15
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