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In:Identity Perspectives from Peripheries
Edited by Yoshiko Matsumoto and Jan-Ola Östman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 352] 2025
► pp. 167–185

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Chapter 8
Core vs. peripheral descriptions of an ambivalent identity

Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

 | Reitaku University | Hamamatsu University School of Medicine
Published online: 13 June 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.352.08aiz
Abstract
This study explores how a Japanese woman who was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in adulthood expresses both her core and peripheral identity in her own words. The analysis reveals that the woman with ASD uses a lot of phrases containing contrastive pairs in her narrative. This allows her to differentiate her identity in her childhood (as a ‘normal’ person) and her current identity (as a person with ‘disorders’). The words which she employs foreground the gap between referential meanings of words and social indexical meanings which pertain to sociocultural identities. The words used convey key aspects of the complex identity of the woman with ASD.
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.Identity from a linguistic anthropological perspective
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Analysis
  • 4.1Where responsibility lies
  • 4.2Ideintification as a peripheral person with development disorders
  • 4.3How does Chika distinguish her current identity from the past?
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (20)
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