“WE CAN’T CLOSE IT YET”: HOW DISCOURSE POSITIONS PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Authors

  • Karen D. Schwartz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/1918-6215.23852

Abstract

In 2004, the government of Manitoba decided to spend $40 million to upgrade the Manitoba Developmental Centre, an institution housing people with intellectual disabilities. By examining local newspaper accounts of this story, I use discourse analysis as a means of uncovering how language works to position people with intellectual disabilities in certain ways. I rely upon Wolfensberger’s (1998) devalued social roles as an analytical framework to consider how our society understands and characterizes these individuals. I argue that within this discourse, people with intellectual disabilities have been cast into three devalued roles: as the object of paternalism, as the object of the professional gaze, and as the failed human. Keywords: People with intellectual disabilities, devaluation, devalued roles, discourse analysis, newspapers

Author Biography

  • Karen D. Schwartz
    Doctoral Candidate Faculty of Education University of Manitoba

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Published

2010-09-29

Issue

Vol 2 (2010)

Section

General

License

Authors retain copyright over their work and license their work for publication in Critical Disabilities Discourses under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivaties 4.0 International License (CC BY-ND 4.0). This means that the work is available for commercial and non-commercial use and reproduction provided that the original authors are credited and the original publication in this journal is cited, following standard academic practice.

How to Cite

Schwartz, K. D. (2010). “WE CAN’T CLOSE IT YET”: HOW DISCOURSE POSITIONS PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES. Critical Disability Discourses, 2. https://doi.org/10.25071/1918-6215.23852