Unsettling Languages, Unruly Bodyminds: A Crip Linguistics Manifesto
Henner, J. & Robinson, O. (2023). Unsettling languages, unruly bodyminds: A crip linguistics manifesto. Journal of Critical Study of Communication and Disability, 1(1), 737. https://do
The articulation is given focus because it is the ideal articulation of language—other articulations are not considered. (8)
Speech and language therapy emphasizes speech as the ideal mode of languaging. (8)
...voices marked by accents or speech dysfluency are sources of humor and further marginalization, and low print literacy rates do not merit interrogation of the reasons for the low rates. (9)
Speech dysfluency is a disability because abled people want everyone to talk with the same degree of fluency unmarked by difference. Sometimes this difference is marked by race and ethnicity, which is then interpreted as disabled. (9)
Language has long been tied to judgments of a person’s capacity and intelligence, and by extension their humanity (Bauman 2004; Berger 2014; Clare 2017; Edwards 2012; St. Pierre 2015). (9)
The expansive linguistic potential of the human body and mind (“bodymind”) is best understood through a critical disability lens. The term bodymind marks the inseparable relationship between the body and mind. (10)
A Crip Linguistics requires flexibility and creativity about how we define, describe, and discuss language and the bodies that use it. (11)
The artificial limitation of linguistics to speech is an extension of the cultural belief that the most or only valid languaging is speech. (12)
Limited thinking about the expansive possibilities of languages also limits the linguist by imagining that languages in other modalities (e.g., signed languages) only exist in opposition to spoken languages—that is, people use one or the other, rather than a combination of semiotic tools; that languaging can exist outside of conventional spoken and signed languages (e.g., using interaction and language games to co–construct meaning). (13)
Crip Linguistics intervenes in mainstream linguistics discussions to destigmatize, yet center, disability in conversation. (13)
A Crip Linguistics holds three essential truths: a) language is not inherently disordered although impairments may exist, b) social perceptions on disability disorders language use, and c) disability in languaging cannot be separated from normative expectations of language use. (14)
Crip Linguistics is fundamentally a resistance against monomodal, spoken language only policies, and the belief that there is one right way to language. (15)
Accented people are marked as deviants, deficient, and require therapy and adjusting to fit into the expected norms of presumed native (abled) speakers. (18)
Accented people are marked as deviants, deficient, and require therapy and adjusting to fit into the expected norms of presumed native (abled) speakers. (20)
Stuttering, lisping, mumbling, stammering, slurring, or non-speaking are all markers of difference. Those markers signify not only disability but are also interpreted as lack of intelligence, capacity, and agency. Those markers are subsequently used as a rationale for exclusion. (20)
The challenge of reliance on written forms and written modalities for linguistic analysis means that 1) languages without easily accessible or standardized written forms tend to be left out of linguistic analysis (e.g., signed languages), and 2) the bulk of language analysis is done on languages and language materials from dominant languages and cultures (see Bender et al., 2021, for an explanation). (21)
Instead, the audience coconstructs the speech, inserting their perceptions and worked toward mutual understanding. The attendees did not experience the speech in the same order, they received the speech in different parts at different times with meanings that shifted with each group. (25)
The normal timeline is determined by ideals and averages as imagined by academics, medical professionals, and educators. (25)
Abled people expect communication to be quick, efficient, and spoken. (26)
Abled people do not realize nor do they consider what normative expectations cost people in terms of language learning, building relationships, and selfactualization amongst disabled people. Disabled people manifest this loss as collective grief. They grieve language they did not have access to and could not learn or struggled with people’s impatience with us and reluctance to go slow, to repeat, to gesture, and the costs of impatience with communications (Brueggemann, 1997). (26)
Crip Linguistics is therefore about putting the people back in languaging and recognizing that analyzing languaging without considering the languagers separates the language from the work that people put into producing them, especially via disabled bodies. (27)
Crip languaging incorporates practices of access intimacy, adaptions of technology, and relationality. To sum up, disabled people do really cool things with language if people would pay attention. (29)