Disability and Discourse: Analysing Inclusive Conversation with People with Intellectual Disabilities

Val Williams

Mar 2011 · John Wiley & Sons

About this eBook

Disability and Discourse applies and explains Conversation Analysis (CA), an established methodology for studying communication, to explore what happens during the everyday encounters of people with intellectual disabilities and the other people with whom they interact.

• Explores conversations and encounters from the lives of people with intellectual disabilities
• Introduces the established methodology of Conversation Analysis, making it accessible and useful to a wide range of students, researchers and practitioners
• Adopts a discursive approach which looks at how people with intellectual disabilities use talk in real-life situations, while showing how such talk can be supported and developed
• Follows people into the meetings and discussions that take place in self-advocacy and research contexts
• Offers insights into how people with learning disabilities can have a voice in their own affairs, in policy-making, and in research

About the author

Val Williams is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norah Fry Research Centre, University of Bristol, UK ? a leading centre for research into services for people with intellectual disabilities based on a social model of disability. Her work concerns the barriers faced by adults with learning disabilities, with particular emphasis on inclusive research and analysis of naturally-occurring communication.