Lexis Episode 81 - Jessica Aiston & Eltham Hill School students on the language of neurodiversity
Welcome to episode 81 of Lexis, a special student takeover edition which features Freya and Miles from Eltham Hill School in South London in conversation with Dr Jessica Aiston, postdoctoral research assistant in Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London (and who previously appeared on episode 50 talking about critical discourse studies). The episode is all about the language of, and around, neurodiversity, including:
Why this episode exists and why Freya and Miles wanted to record it
What we mean by ‘neurodiversity’ and other helpful definitions
The neurodiversity paradigm
Terms, labels and the history behind these
The pros and cons of certain labels
The importance of autistic people having agency in the terms being used
Semantic reclamation and euphemism cycles
Person-first and identity-first terms
The importance of autistic people centering themselves and being centered in linguistic research
Using the lens of CCritical Discourse Analysis for exploring discourse around autism and neurodiversity
Jess’s current work on the Autism in Affinity Spaces project
Jess has supplied the following references based on the topics raised in the show:
Kenny, L., Hattersley, C., Molins, B., Buckley, C., Povey, C., & Pellicano, E. (2016). Which terms should be used to describe autism? Perspectives from the UK autism community. Autism, 20(4), 442-462. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361315588200
Botha, M., & Cage, E. (2022). "Autism research is in crisis": A mixed method study of researcher's constructions of autistic people and autism research. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1050897
Botha, M., Hanlon, J., & Williams, G. L. (2023). Does language matter? Identity-first versus person-first language use in autism research: A response to Vivanti. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 53, 870-878. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04858-w
Cage, E., Crompton, C. J., Dantas, S., Strachan, K., Birch, R., Robinson, M., Morgan-Appel, S., MacKenzie-Nash, C., Gallagher, A., & Botha, M. (2024). What are the autism research priorities of autistic adults in Scotland? Autism, 28(9), 2179-2190. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231222656
Botha, M., Chapman, R., Giwa Onaiwu, M., Kapp, S. K., Stannard Ashley, A., & Walker, N. (2024). The neurodiversity concept was developed collectively: An overdue correction on the origins of neurodiversity theory. Autism, 28(6), 1591-1594. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241237871
Jess’s paper on the importance of inclusive linguistics research: Aiston, J., Koteyko, N., & van Driel, M. (2025). Discourse-based approaches to autistic focussed interests: Understanding shared focus, mutual accommodation, and multimodal expression, Applied Linguistics https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaf006
The project website for Autism in Affinity Spaces can be found here: https://autisminaffinityspaces.org/
Jess on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jessica_Aiston
Jess’s work on CDS featured on this episode of Lexis: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/6XMKoRtp90b
She has written two pieces for emagazine on CDS and the language of the manosphere: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/emc-magazines/#emagazine
Also featured on BBC’s Word of Mouth show with Michael Rosen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002js96
Big thanks to Freya, Miles and their teacher El Power at Eltham Hill for instigating this episode and for all the work around it.
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys