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Article published In: Dialogic Matters: Interrelating Dialogue, the Material, and Social Change
Edited by Theresa Castor
[Language and Dialogue 11:1] 2021
► pp. 59–82

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Self-representation of people with disabilities

“Disabling” the audience, challenging aesthetic norms and employing ironic echoing

 | David Yellin College of Education, Israel
Published online: 22 April 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00084.koh
Abstract
This paper examines the contribution of multimodal strategies in challenging aspects of public discourse about people with disabilities. It looks into media texts that were created by people with disabilities, in which the topic of disability is not a metaphor or a narrative prosthesis, but a demand for recognition and a call for a sincere dialogue, using three complementary strategies: disabling the viewers, challenging dominant aesthetic norms, and ironic echoing. The paper focuses on two autobiographical videos, a promotional video, a small corpus of paintings and a photograph, in which ironic echoing is the dominant strategy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Disability: Conceptualization, models and media representation
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Representations of disabled individuals in the media
  • 5.A reversal of perspective and posing a demand to the audience
    • 5.1Disabling the audience: Undermining the reliability of the senses
    • 5.2Challenging aesthetic norms
    • 5.3Ironic echoing
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (45)
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Castor, Theresa R.
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