On Commonsense and Autistic Languages—What is the Relationship?

• In Event: 40207 - Research in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis

Abstract

In our book on Autistic Intelligence, Jason Turowetz and I propose a “sociological understanding
of autism in terms of conduct that violates or disrupts common sense—the tacit assumptions by which we continually measure social competence in the everyday world.” Furthermore, we suggest that “in challenging commonsense assumptions, autistic behavior can make those assumptions strange, bringing to the surface deep sensemaking practices that are invisible when interactions go smoothly.” Accordingly, we propose that co-participants sometimes can grasp the logic behind otherwise odd or challenging behavior and incorporate that logic into a response. Classically (e.g., Ricks and Wing, 1975; Wing 1981) such logic has been called the “language” of autism (cf. Maynard and Turowetz, 2022:18). Here I extend the exploration of the language of autism, drawing on discussions about “the double empathy problem” (Milton 2012), and how autism is a "rhetorical" presence (e.g., Yergeau 2017) that competes with common sense rhetoric. I define more fully what the “language of autism” can be in terms of embodied conduct. I provide and analyze as many examples of the language of autism as time allows. I conclude by specifying a relationship between common sense and the language of autism, and explore how appreciating the language of autism opens windows into many forms of atypical interaction and thus into a wider appreciation of presences rather than absences.

Author

• Douglas W. Maynard, University of Wisconsin-Madison