Gideon (he/him) is a multiply neurodivergent/disabled translator and (somewhat) mature student of Medical Humanities originally from Germany, now living near Edinburgh, Scotland. His research interests focus on the intersection of neurodiversity and language(s) in the broadest sense, including literature, linguistics, translation studies and cross-cultural concepts, with his dissertation covering the topic ‘Constructing Neurodivergence Through Language(s): Exploring Neurodivergence and Linguistics in Two Speculative Fiction Novels’ based on the case studies PET by Akwaeke Emezi and Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. Gideon sometimes writes weird and/or speculative fiction under the pen name Gregory Lawrence, which – like his socials – can be found at: https://linktr.ee/gregory.lawrence
The following is the (unedited) text of a so-called Student-Directed Assignment (SDA) devised whilst completing an MA in Medical Humanities at Durham University 2024- 25. This assignment formed part of the module ‘Neurodiversity and the Humanities’, and, as per the module’s outline, ‘presents an opportunity for students to draw on their various strengths, backgrounds, and interests, to produce a piece of work that engages with an aspect of neurodiversity and its intersections with the humanities’. Structurally, an SDA comprises two parts: a creative component and a theoretical commentary.
This SDA here utilizes a conlang as a research method to demonstrate a central tenet of critical neurodiversity studies’ understanding of autism: that supposed autistic language deficits – pathologizing interpretations are unfortunately still part and parcel of autism discourse in media, medicine and academia – in reality constitute (language- dependent) differences from arbitrary normativity. The project’s creative component is a language guide titled ‘The Laut Language—a Beginner’s Guide’ (3000 words) that describes selected features from a conlang named Laut, developed specifically for this assignment. The guide is followed by a concise theoretical commentary (1000 words) that outlines why specific choices were made in the conlang, and how those relate to neurodiversity studies in general and the research question/aim in particular.
The research question/method’s location at the intersection of neurodiversity studies and linguistics together with the limited word count (4000 for both components combined) results in various limitations. The only limitations explicitly referenced in the theoretical commentary refer to conlangs as a research method per se, emphasizing that the conlang Laut is not necessarily intended to better reflect autistic experiences, but to make a point about the arbitrary nature of (neuro)normative language conventions. For space reasons, it was unfortunately not possible to elaborate on choices as regards the actual craft or art of conlanging in the theoretical commentary. Instead, the commentary briefly summarizes the areas where supposed autistic language deficits that the SDA challenges lie: echolalia, prosody, and pragmatics. It then also describes through which features the conlang addresses these deficits and how: firstly, reduplication as a feature mirrors (echoes..?) echolalia to show it cannot and should not be universally pathologized; secondly, eschewing prosody to convey information structure challenges the pathologization of atypical prosody; thirdly and finally, a grammaticalized way of expressing information structure as well as the explicit grammaticalization of specific implicatures of utterances is intended to interrogate the notion that autistics are ‘pragmatically impaired’.
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