"They're Different but They're Not Different": An Analysis of Disability as Nonnormative Other

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: The Things Kids Say: Dis/Ability Construction in Youth Talk

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that fourth-grade students who have disabilities per school structures, do not take up that identity in classroom discourse and instead point the conversation away from themselves to a negatively perceived nonnormative other. Additionally, I will discuss how this positioning is taken up by students who have been given a disability label because of their parents and the school’s perception of their bodymind positioning in the classroom space. Data for this research was obtained from a larger IRB-approved ethnographic study, located in a general education classroom in a suburban Mid-West school. For this paper, the discourses of two female participants, Aura and Molly, who received specific modifications because of a disability label, will be discussed.

Author

• Megan R. Brown, The Ohio State University