An investigation into the pragmatic features in the language products of high functioning autisti

Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the pragmatic features in the spoken and written language products of high-functioning autistic people, through the case study of Christian West

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

NGUYỄN LÊ THỦY TIÊN

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRAGMATIC FEATURES IN THE LANGUAGE PRODUCTS

OF HIGH-FUNCTIONING AUTISTIC

INDIVIDUALS: A CASE-STUDY IN THE USA

MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES

OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES

Da Nang, 2020

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

NGUYỄN LÊ THỦY TIÊN

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PRAGMATIC FEATURES IN THE LANGUAGE PRODUCTS

OF HIGH-FUNCTIONING AUTISTIC

INDIVIDUALS: A CASE-STUDY IN THE USA

Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 822.02.01

MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES

OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES

Supervisor: VÕ THANH SƠN CA, Ph.D

Da Nang, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thank you Dr Vo Thanh Son Ca, for the rapid and infinite help you

provided me during the course of my research from the very beginning

Thank you Becky and Nadine, for lending me an ear when I need to talk and

believing that I can make a difference

Thank you Anh and Linh, for your assistance during my research

And thank you to my parents, who provided me with the care I needed

ABSTRACT

One of the most universal traits of high functioning autistic people is the difficulty in language production This creates several problems for autistic people when interacting with neurotypicals, putting them at risk of being discriminated against and misunderstood (Asperger, 1991) However, little has been done on this phenomenon, as most previous research on language of autistic people only produced results based on experiments in artificial environments (Fine, Bartolucci, Szatmari, & Ginsberg, 1994; Mitchell, Saltmarsh, & Russell, 1997; Surian, Baron-Cohen, & Van der Lely, 1996) Moreover, the subjects of these studies were almost always autistic children and adolescents, leaving a gap in the literature which is the language of autistic adults Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the pragmatic features in the spoken and written language products of high-functioning autistic people, through the case study of Christian Weston Chandler (CWC), a high-functioning autistic man who did not receive proper treatment for his autism throughout his life Specifically, this study attempted to identify the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s spoken and written language and examined the connections between CWC‘s spoken and written language Based on the Discourse Analysis method (Salkind, 2010), the data from 37 phone calls and

290 emails between CWC and several different neurotypicals were qualitatively analyzed These phone calls and emails were analyzed separately in order to identify the main features of CWC‘s spoken language and written language CWC‘s spoken language were then compared with his written language in order to examine the connections between his spoken and written language The findings suggested that both CWC‘s spoken and written language shared two main features: The first is the mismatch between the non-literal utterances in the neurotypicals‘ statements and the literal utterances in CWC‘s responses, and the second is the conformation of the responses to the intention behind the neurotypicals‘ statements However, the literal

- non-literal conformation was more apparent in written texts than in spoken texts,

and the literal – non-literal mismatch was more apparent in spoken texts than in written texts Furthermore, there was a connection between CWC‘s level of stress and the increase of the literal – non-literal mismatch in CWC‘s spoken language, while there was no such increase in his written language There are also two other features, each of which was unique to either CWC‘s spoken or written language They are the tendency to repeat the neurotypicals‘ statements word-by-word (in spoken language), and the tendency to group multiple responses to the neuropicals‘ statements into one paragraph without clarifying which statement was being addressed (in written language) However, there was a few instances in CWC‘s written language when he also repeated the neurotypicals‘ statements, and this tendency was somewhat linked to the decrease in grouping tendency in CWC‘s response – that is – CWC was more likely to separate his responses with ordinal adverbs or numbers if the neurotypicals also did the same in their emails Overall, although there were instances when CWC‘s responses conformed to the intention behind the neurotypicals‘ statements, the frequency of this happening was low and inconsistent Thus, it is advisable for teachers, medical staff, social workers and the general public to limit the use of non-literal utterances when communicating with high-functioning autistic people During communication, they should express their point as clear and concise as possible It is also necessary that they should not assume bad intention from high-functioning autistic people when miscommunication occurs Medical staff and social workers can also refer to the results of this study to create a framework for effective methods of treatment and assistance for high-functioning autistic people

Keyword: high-functioning autism; language products; pragmatics; case-study,

non-literal utterance

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

LIST OF TABLES ix

LIST OF FIGURES x

Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 RATIONALE 1

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 5

1.2.1 Aims 5

1.2.2 Objectives 5

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 6

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 6

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 6

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 6

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW 8

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: 9

2.2.1 High-functioning autism and related concepts 9

2.2.1.1 Theory of mind 9

2.2.1.2 Autism 10

2.2.2 Speech Act 12

2.2.2.1 Definition of Speech Act 12

2.2.2.2 Structure of a speech act 12

2.2.2.3 Illocutionary Force 13

2.2.2.4 Explicit performative vs implicit performative: 13

2.2.2.5 Indirect speech act 14

2.2.2.6 Literal speech act vs non-literal speech act 15

2.2.3 A description of CWC 17

2.3 SUMMARY 18

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY 19

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 19

3.2 RESEARCH METHODS 19

3.3 PROCEDURES 20

3.3.1 Data Collection 20

3.3.2 Data coding 23

3.3.2.1 Coder 23

3.3.2.2 Coder training 23

3.3.2.3 Reliability estimate of coding 25

3.3.3 Data analysis 26

3.4 SUMMARY 30

Chapter Four FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 31

4.1 FEATURES OF LITERAL AND NON-LITERAL UTTERANCES IN CWC‘S SPOKEN LANGUAGE 31

4.1.1 Features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s phone calls from August 3rd, 2009 to November 10th, 2009 31

4.1.1.1 Phone calls between CWC and Kacey (from August 3rd, 2009 to November 10th, 2009) 32

4.1.1.2 Phone calls between CWC and Matthew (27th phone call, November 4th, 2009) 43

4.1.1.3 The 28 phone calls from August 3rd, 2009 to November 10th, 2009 48 4.1.2 Features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s phone calls from January 22nd, 2010 to February 25th, 2010 50

4.1.3 Features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s 38 phone calls 56

4.2 FEATURES OF LITERAL AND NON-LITERAL UTTERANCES IN

CWC‘S WRITTEN LANGUAGE 57

4.3 THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CWC‘S SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE 66

4.4 DISCUSSION 70

4.5 SUMMARY 76

Chapter Five CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 77

5.1 CONCLUSIONS 77

5.2 IMPLICATIONS 83

5.2.1 To teachers 84

5.2.2 To medical staff and social workers 84

5.2.3 To the general public 85

5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 85

REFERENCES

QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI LUẬN VĂN (Bản sao)

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CWC : Christian Weston Chandler

LC : Liquid Chris

LIST OF TABLES

Number

3.1 Symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s

3.2 Symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s

3.3 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘s

3.4 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘s

4.1 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘s

spoken language in each phone call with Kacey 37

4.3 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘s

spoken language in each phone call with Alec 55

4.4 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘s

written language in each Mailbag section 64 5.1 Features of CWC‘s spoken and written language and their

LIST OF FIGURES

Number of

3.1

The timeline of the main events of CWC‘s life from 2008

https://sonichu.com/w/images/0/0d/Timeline.png)

21

3.2 Details of the data collected for analysis 22

4.1 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken language

4.2 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken language

4.3 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken language

4.4 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s written language

Chapter One INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides the rationale of the study, together with the aims, objectives, scope of study and the significance of the study This chapter also aims

to introduce the basic framework for the whole research

1.1 RATIONALE

Language production does not only involve the comprehension of the language itself, but also a good understanding of the context involved in the communication environment, and how to maintain the conversation in a way that lines up with the expectation of the people involved (for example, how to help people save face) The latter depends largely on the ability to understand other people‘s points of view, or the ability to ―put yourself into someone else‘s shoes‖ This ability is developed through the human‘s natural ability to interact and bond with people

Autistic people are born without this natural ability Even high-functioning autistic people do not innately understand how to relate to other people Therefore, their language production is seriously hampered They only have the understanding

of language‘s meaning in its most literal sense, without any understanding of how to apply language in a socially appropriate way As a result, they are forced to develop language in the way that they think is right, which can be completely different from the ―right‖ way neurotypical people use their language This creates several problems for autistic people when communicating with the world High-functioning autistic people are less affected by autism and are better at developing intelligence Some high-functioning autistic people have the IQ level of above average However, they are still unable to connect with neurotypicals properly; therefore, their language problem remains

It is very hard, however, for neurotypicals to understand the difficulty that autistic people face, since the ability to understand other people is an innate ability

every neurotypical person has As a result, neurotypicals fail to acknowledge that autistic people have a significant problem with communication, and most neurotypicals think this inability to communicate appropriately is due to the autistic people being deliberately rude and disrespectful to social rules instead of having an actual problem This discrimination is much more profound in high-functioning autistic people, who display less noticeable traits of autism and can be mistaken for neurotypicals It is also worth noticing that this ability, though innate, is extremely complex and difficult to explain in a literal way; thus, even when neurotypicals are able to acknowledge the communication problem, it is still very difficult and frustrating for the neurotypicals to explain to autistic people how to communicate appropriately

Consider this example of Attwood (2007, p.11-12), depicting Jack, a boy with Asperger‘s syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism This conversation is supposed to take place during the birthday party of Jack‘s friend Alicia, between Jack and the girl‘s mother This is the first time the mother has met Jack, and she does not know about Jack‘s mental condition:

[…] And here he was, a solitary figure clutching a birthday card and present

which he immediately gave to Alicia‟s mother […] „You must be Jack,‟ she said and he simply replied with a blank face, „Yes‟ She smiled at him, and was about to suggest he went into the garden to join Alicia and her friends when he said,

“Alicia‟s birthday present is one of those special dolls that my mum says every girl wants, […], but what I really wanted to get her was some batteries Do you like batteries? I do, I have a hundred and ninety-seven batteries Batteries are really useful What batteries do you have in your remote controllers?” Without waiting for

a reply, he continued, „I have a special battery from Russia My dad‟s an engineer […] and he came home with six triple-A batteries for me with Russian writing on them They are my favourite When I go to bed I like to look at my box of batteries and sort them in alphabetical order before I go to sleep I always hold one of my Russian batteries as I fall asleep […] How many batteries do you have?‟ She

replied, “Well, I don‟t know, but we must have quite a few…”, and felt unsure what

to say next.[…]

Clearly, in this scenario, there is a mismatch in communication between Jack

and Alicia‘s mother When the mother says ―You must be Jack”, her intention is to

strike a conversation and request for more information about Jack Jack, however,

can only see the semantic surface of the question and answer with a simple ―yes”

And without considering his listener‘s interest, Jack starts the conversation with his present, and drives the conversation toward the topic of batteries, one of his hobbies Jack disregards whether the mother is interested in battery, and whether the mother can listen to him; he simply continues the conversation as he sees fit

Furthermore, when he asks ―What batteries do you have in your remote controllers” and ―How many batteries do you have”, he holds no complicated pragmatic

intention; he only wants her to answer the question literally This turns the conversation to a very awkward direction; and without prior knowledge of Jack‘s autism, the mother may misunderstand Jack‘s intention, thinking he has no communication manner

This is a rather obvious example of the differences between autistic people and neurotypicals in terms of language In more complex communicative situations, the differences can manifest in more subtle ways The subtlety is harder to detect and creates more room for potential misunderstanding and inconvenience

One extremely peculiar case of high-functioning autism is Christian Weston Chandler (CWC) CWC is a high-functioning autistic man whose autism was not properly treated and who is infamous on the Internet for his autism Born on 24thFebruary, 1982, in Virginia, USA, to Robert and Barbara Chandler, CWC displayed signs of autism as a child and received a diagnosis for autism His autism was probably caused by a gene defect due to his parents‘ old age (Robert was 55 years old and Barbara was 41 years old when CWC was born) Robert and Barbara, however, refused to seek proper treatment for CWC‘s autism, resorting to bribing CWC with toys to get him to speak and paying children in CWC‘s school to

befriend him Robert rejected the offer of CWC‘s primary school to send him to a special education school, for fear of discrimination Due to his parents‘ coddling, CWC was unable to learn how to behave properly His erratic behavior, strange manner of speech, and the comic Sonichu that he created soon caught the attention

of the internet Several malicious people, or ―internet trolls‖, started to tease and harass CWC to get a reaction from him The harassing went on for several years, causing significantly negative and lasting impact on CWC‘s life

CWC has several traits of a typical high-functioning autistic person such as

https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Autism#Chris.27s_symptoms):

1 Having no theory of mind, the ability to understand others' thoughts, feelings, ideas, intents… and the understanding that others‘ thought and feeling might

be different than himself

2 Understanding words and concept only in their literal sense This trait is apparent in CWC‘s interaction with people

3 Extreme gullibility, which is the main reason why he fell prey to trolls

4 Lack of social awareness and empathy, which can be seen in his behavior toward Megan Schroeder, a friend of CWC that cut tie with him after he published a nude drawing of her and refused to take responsibility for his action

5 Delayed mental development Throughout his interaction, and particularly his communication, he displays the mental capability of someone far younger than his age

6 Extremely narrow range of interest, which can be seen in his obsession with

toys, finding a girlfriend and creating his comic Sonichu

7 Fear and resistance to change, which can be seen from his refusal to leave home and find a job and part ways with his toys

In addition to these traits, CWC‘s autism was left untreated due to his parents‘ refusal to seek professional help This led to one of the purest

manifestations of high-functioning autism that can be seen in an autistic person, making CWC a good subject for analysis Moreover, information about CWC‘s life

is publicly available at the website CWCki (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Main_Page)

It is rare to see such detailed documentation on an autistic person‘s life Therefore, CWC‘s life provides good resources to study the difficulties that high-functioning autistic people face when communicating with other people Through the analysis

of CWC‘s life, one can expect to discover valuable information on how functioning autistic people communicate and the misunderstandings that they encounter everyday

high-For all the above-mentioned reasons, the researcher decided to choose to carry out the research study titled ‗An Investigation into the Pragmatic Features in the Language Products of High-Functioning Autistic Individual: a Case-Study in the USA‘

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

This study aims to analyze the spoken and written language features of CWC

in terms of pragmatics, specifically the literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s speech act In particular, the study analyzes spoken and written discourse between CWC and the neurotypicals with whom he interacted

3 What are the connections between CWC‘s spoken and written language?

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This study is limited to the analysis of the language products of CWC This study is limited to a case study of one specific person Hence, the findings may not

be generalized to every high-functioning autistic person Furthermore, CWC is a high-functioning autistic man Thus, this study may not be representative of lower-functioning autistic people

This study also aims to collect data of CWC‘s language products between the period of 2008 and 2012, since this is the period that saw the most noteworthy interaction between CWC and the neurotypicals he interacted with on the Internet Data beyond this period is not taken into consideration

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study aims to provide useful and detailed information about the way high-functioning autistic people produce language and, from these findings, explain the misunderstandings in communication between high-functioning autistic people and neurotypicals, from obvious to subtle The results of the study can provide useful insights for educators, medical staff, social workers and the general public so that they can come up with ways to better interact with high-functioning autistic people and help them integrate into society

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The study is presented in the following parts:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter aims to introduce the rationale of the study and to present the aim, objectives and research questions of the study The outline of this paper is also included in this chapter

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background

This chapter provides a detailed outline of the theoretical background which clarifies some important concepts of the study Previous studies related to language use in high-functioning autistic people are also presented in this chapter

Chapter 3: Research Methods

This chapter aims to present the methodology of this study, including research methods, data collection and data analysis

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions

This chapter presents the results and discussion of the study In this chapter, the answers to the research questions raised in Chapter 1 are provided through qualitative analysis

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications

This chapter presents the conclusions from the general findings of the study,

as well as limitations and suggestions for future research

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter aims to provide a description of some notable previous research

on languages in autistic people, in order to gain an overall view of the state of affairs in this research area, and to pinpoint what further research needs to be conducted This chapter will also introduce important theoretical background for this study

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

There have been several research studies on the topic of language in autistic people Almost studies focus on some general language features of autistic people, particularly autistic children

It has been suggested that high-functioning autistic adolescents speak in monologue tone during interpersonal conversation such as interviews (Ghaziuddin

& Gerstein, 1996; Ramberg, Ehlers, Nyden, Johansson, & Gillberg, 1996) and have problems providing appropriate response to questions and clear references to people and places in conversations (Adams, Green, Gilchrist, & Cox, 2002; Fine, Bartolucci, Szatmari, & Ginsberg, 1994) Surian, Baron-Cohen, and Van der Lely (1996) added that they also have difficulties judging the amount of information to

be included in the responses

In terms of language reception, autistic people have problems interpreting figurative speech, particularly with idiom, metaphor and irony (Happé, 1993; Kerbel & Grunwell, 1998; Martin & McDonald, 2004) Specifically, autistic people are not good at interpreting the intention behind a speech act of the speakers and tend to interpret utterance literally (Mitchell, Saltmarsh, & Russell, 1997)

In terms of formulaic speech, which is defined as word sequences that are prefabricated, stored and retrieved from memory (Wray & Perkins, 2000), the speech of autistic people bears distinctive features Some of the features are: repetitive and stereotyped utterances (e.g overused phrases such as ―and now‖ or

―excuse me‖), strange sound-meaning associations (e.g using ―boyfriend-free girl‖

to refer to a single girl), excessive literal language (e.g using ―slow-in-the-mind‖ to refer to a mentally handicapped person), difficulty with pronoun (e.g saying

―would you like an apple?‖ in order to request for an apple), and immediate or delayed echolalia (Tager-Flusberg & Calkins, 1990; Lord & Paul, 1997)

Such abnormalities are proven to occur due to the deficit of theory of mind, which impairs both pragmatic and non-verbal social abilities (Happé, 1994) Deficit

of theory of mind impacts autistic people‘s ability to understand mental states such

as belief, knowledge and emotion (Baron-Cohen, 1993; Hobson, 1993), leading to abnormalities in language

In general, those studies have constructed a good profile of language features

of autistic people However, they are more focused on language of autistic children

or adolescents than that of adults (the subject of Mitchell et al (1997) were children Surian et al (1996) chose subjects with mean age from 11 to 12 And the mean age of those of Ghaziuddin and Gerstein (1996) was 16.4) Furthermore, those studies were done on the grounds of constructing a general profile of language features of autistic people, and some of them were done in an artificial laboratory environment (For example, Fine et al (1994) collected their data through 10-minute conversations between their subjects and an examiner; Surian et al (1996) asked their subjects to watch a play performed by the researchers) How the language abnormalities impact communication between autistic people and neurotypicals in a natural interaction setting has not been thoroughly researched

is useful in language production According to Astington and Pelletier (1996),

people‘s mental state is expressed in all verbal communication through speech acts Although the connection between language and theory of mind ―has been a matter

of some debate and it is still considered a central issue in theory of mind research‖ (Gamannossi & Pinto, 2014, p 2), it is undeniable that theory of mind plays an important role in language production According to Milligan, Astington, and Dack (2007), language abilities does not only include semantics and syntax, but also pragmatics, which is the capacity to input and produce language properly during communication activities Theory of mind is important in the process of understanding the pragmatics aspect of language, as it involves understanding other people‘s mental states

Autistic people, however, lack theory of mind, and therefore face great difficulty in communicating effectively Their lack of theory of mind can be described as ―mind blindness‖ (Baron-Cohen, 1990, p 88) They cannot understand the pragmatic usage of language, as they lack the ability to understand the thoughts, beliefs and expectations of other people and predict the next course of action This

is one of the main symptoms of autism

2.2.1.2 Autism

Autism, or Autism spectrum disorder (ADS), ―refers to a group of pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders that involve moderately to severely disrupted functioning in regard to social skills and socialization, expressive and receptive communication, and repetitive or stereotyped behaviors and interests‖ (Pennington, Cullinan, & Southern, 2014, p 1) According to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), people with autism have several deficits in ―social-emotional reciprocity‖, ―non-verbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction‖ and ―developing, maintaining and understanding relationships‖ Autistic people have considerable difficulty in forming relationships with people, largely due to their difficulty in communication This is due to their lack of theory of mind that hampers their communication skills

a Symptoms of autism:

According to the DSM-5, the symptoms of autism include: communication deficits, overly dependent on routine, highly sensitive to changes in the environment, and intensely focused on inappropriate items

It also notes that there are people who show mild symptoms and people who show severe symptoms The former show better intelligence and social skills than the latter Such people are sometimes diagnosed with high-functioning autism

b High-functioning autism:

Based on IQ threshold, autism can be divided into four sub-groups: Asperger Syndrome (AS), and high-, medium-, and low-functioning autism (Baron-Cohen, 2006) People with high-functioning autism and AS differ from other people with other kinds of autism in their IQ of at least 70 and their cognitive skills that are

"higher functioning‖ (Sanders, 2009) As there are few differences between AS and high-functioning autism, the distinction between the two is a topic of controversy (Witwer & Lecavalier, 2008) For the purpose of this current study, only high-functioning autism is taken into consideration

Rudy (2018) noted that high-functioning autistic people are able to use spoken language to communicate more than low functioning people; are more likely

to be able to be aware of others‘ expectations (though with much less competence than a neurotypical); are more aware of social rules; and are more likely to look

―normal‖ They can sometimes be mistaken for a neurotypical (this is the main reason for the misunderstandings they face)

c Delayed echolalia

Echolalia is defined as ―the socially awkward or inappropriate verbatim repetition of part or all of a previously spoken utterance‖ (Neely, Gerow, Rispoli, Lang, & Pullen, 2015, p 82) There are two types of echolalia: immediate echolalia, which occurs when the time period between the initial utterance and the repetition is about a few seconds; and delayed echolalia, which occurs a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years after the initial utterance (Vicker, 1999; Foxx,

Schreck, Garito, Smith, & Weisenberger, 2004; Hetzroni & Tannous, 2004)

This is a common phenomenon in young children‘s language development Ganos, Ogrzal, Schnitzler, and Münchau (2012) noted that a child learns new behaviors by imitating, and echolalia occurs when the child attempts to reenact a previously acquired vocal behavior After the age of three, echolalia becomes less common as the child acquires language skills (Ganos et al., 2012) However, autistic people retain echolalia even after they pass the age of three Due to their inability to bond with people, autistic people‘s sources of echolalia often come from television or audio recordings (Neely et al., 2015)

2.2.2 Speech Act

2.2.2.1 Definition of Speech Act

Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

(Richards & Schmidt, 2002, p 498) defines speech act as ―an utterance as a

functional unit in communication‖ There are two types of utterances:

―Propositional meaning or locutionary meaning‖ and ―illocutionary meaning or illocutionary force‖ Locutionary meaning is the literal meaning of the utterance, and the focus in in what is said Illocutionary meaning concerns more about about the effect of the spoken or written text has on the reader or the listener Austin (1962) further expanded the definition of speech act by introducing the term

―performatives‖ A performative is defined as an utterance which contains a special type of verb (a performative verb) that indicates a performance of an action

2.2.2.2 Structure of a speech act

Austin (1955) divided the action of performing an utterance into three related acts They are: ―locutionary act‖, the basic act of utterance that produce a meaningful linguistic expression and carries the semantic meanings of the words;

―illocutionary act‖, which focuses on the intention that we have in mind when we produce an utterance (also known as the illocutionary force of an utterance); and

―perlocutionary act‖, which focuses on the effect the speaker intend his or her utterance to have on the hearer

An example to demonstrate the differences among the three speech acts is

the sentence “it‟s hot in here” The locutionary act will define the sentence as a

literal description of the speaker‘s state of feeling hot in the place The illocutionary act will imply two possibilities: the speaker either request the hearer to open the window or express his or her refusal to close the window because he or she feels hot The perlocutionary act will influence the hearer to close the window

2.2.2.3 Illocutionary Force

The illocutionary force is the making of a speech act through the intention associated with it Searle (1969) classified illocutionary acts into the following category: ―representative‖, which is an utterance used to describe a state of affairs, including acts of stating, asserting, denying, confessing, admitting, notifying,

predicting (Ex: I cooked breakfast yesterday); ―question‖, which is an utterance

used to get the hearer to provide information, including acts of asking, inquiring…

(Ex: What did you do yesterday?); ―commissive‖, which is an utterance used to

commit the speaker to do something, including acts of promising, vowing,

volunteering, offering, guaranteeing (Ex: I promise to help you with your

homework tonight); ―expressive‖, which is an utterance used to express the

emotional state of the speaker, including acts of apologizing, thanking,

congratulating, welcoming (Ex: Congratulations for passing your exam!);

―directive‖, which is an utterance used to command the hearer to do something, including acts of requesting, ordering, forbidding, warning, advising, suggesting

(Ex: Open the window); “declaration‖, which is an utterance used to change the

status of some entity, including acts of appointing, naming, resigning, surrendering,

arresting… (Ex: I hereby appoint you to be the new director of this facility.)

2.2.2.4 Explicit performative vs implicit performative:

Austin (1962) divided performative utterances are into explicit and implicit ones Explicit performatives employs the use of performative verb(s), while in implicit performatives, the verb(s) does not appear explicitly, but have to be interpreted from the utterance Using explicit performatives for a command has

much more serious impact than using implicit performatives (Yule, 1996) Thomas (1995) commented that people therefore often avoid using an explicit performative since it could potentially imply an unequal power relationship or rights on the part

of the speaker in many circumstances

An example of explicit performative vs implicit performative is the two utterances below:

a I order you to close the door

b Could you close the door?

In the first utterance, the speaker employs the use of a performative verb and delivers a literal message There is no possibility of misunderstanding in this utterance The second utterance, however, is also a command but is uttered as an interrogative sentence It is rather ambiguous without an appropriate context, since there is no performative verb in this case

2.2.2.5 Indirect speech act

Searle (1979) stated that a speaker does not always perform an utterance to express literally what he/she means This tendency can often be seen in metaphors, irony, hints… Someone may say ―I have work to do at home‖ in order to reject an offer to go out, rather than to state a literal fact that he/she has some work to do at his/her house Searle (1979) proposed 6 groups of sentences that are

―conventionally‖ recognized as indirect speech act: group 1 – sentences concerning

someone‘s ability to perform something (“could you be quite?”); group 2 – sentences concerning someone‘s wish that someone else will fulfil a request (“I

would be grateful if you reply to this letter soon”); group 3 – sentences concerning

about someone doing something (“Aren‟t you going to eat your vegetables?”); group 4 – sentences concerning someone‘s willingness to do something (“would

you mind closing the door?”); group 5 – sentences concerning reasons for doing

something (“you had better go now”); group 6 – sentences combining one of these

element inside another and sentences with an explicit directive illocutionary verb

inside one of these context (“Might I ask you to stop talking?”)

2.2.2.6 Literal speech act vs non-literal speech act

According to Searle and Vandereken (1985), a speaker performs a literal speech act when he/she performs an utterance which express a literal force and content within the context Recanati (2002) also defined a literal meaning of an expression as the meaning it has in related to the conventions of the language

However, many speech act are not perform literally, but through the use of metaphors, irony, hints… (Searle & Vandereken, 1985) According to Recanati (2001), a meaning that is considered non-literal is the one that makes a significant,

or ―nonminimal‖ departure from the literal meaning Consider this example: the

utterance “James is hungry” carries a literal meaning if the speaker‘s intention is to

announce the fact that James is hungry The utterance has a non-literal meaning when the speaker‘s intention is to ask for a meal for James, which is a significant departure from the literal meaning Recanati (2002) stated that non-literal meaning

is often ―secondary meaning‖ (Recanati, 2002, p.266), which is a deprivation from a presupposed primary meaning

According to Searle and Vanderken (1985), non-literal utterances often manifested through metaphors, metonymy and irony

a Metaphors

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2019), a metaphor is ―a

figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another.‖ Chandler (2007, p 127) stated that metaphors ―involves one signified acting as a signifier referring to a different signified‖ Metaphors requires readers or hearers to go beyond the dictionary meaning of words in order to understand the true intention of the speakers or writers According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980, p.5), ―the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing

in terms of another‖

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) also classified metaphors as:

- Orientational metaphors: referring to spatial features (up/down, in/out, over/under…)

- Ontological metaphors: referring to activities, emotions and ideas with entities and substances (for example: personification…);

- Structural metaphors: combining the above two types in order to allow us to structure one concept in terms of another

b Metonymy

The Merriam-Webster dictionary (2019) defined metonymy as: ―a figure of

speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it

is an attribute or with which it is associated‖ Unlike metaphor, which makes connections among unrelated concept, metonymy combines two signified with are closely related to each other (Chandler, 2007) Chandler (2007) complied a list of most frequently used metonymies as:

1) Effect for cause (―Don‘t get hot under the collar!‖ for ―Don‘t get angry!‖);

2) Object for user or associated institution (―the Crown‖ for the monarchy,

―the press‖ for journalists)

3) Substance for form (―papers‖ for newspapers)

4) Place for event (―Chernobyl‖ for the Chernobyl nuclear accident)

5) Place for person (―No 10‖ for the British prime minister)

6) Place for institution (―Hollywood‖ for the people working in Hollywood) 7) Institution for people (―Cambridge university‖ for the Cambridge university‘s staff members)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) also commented on some other types of metonymies including:

1) Producer for product: We own a Van Gosh (the speaker refers to the

painting by Van Gosh)

2) Object for user: The burger is waiting for the bill (the burger refers to the

customer who ordered a burger and is now waiting for the bill)

3) Controller for controlled: Trump didn‟t want to negotiate (Trump was

responsible for the decision of not wanting to negotiate)

c Irony

The Merriam-Webster dictionary (2019) defined irony as ―the use of words

to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning‖ Unlike metaphor, which force the hearers or readers to employ the use of connecting two concepts, and metonymy, which associates two related references, the intention of an irony is in contrast with the utterance‘s literal meaning Someone may say ―I love it‖ when in reality he or she intent to say he or she hates it Comprehension of irony ―requires a distinction between what is said and what is meant‖ (Chandler, 2007, p.135)

2.2.3 A description of CWC

According to information complied by the website CWCki, CWC was born

on 24th February, 1982, in Virginia, USA, to Robert and Barbara Chandler CWC displayed signs of autism as a child and received a diagnosis for autism His autism was probably caused by a gene defect due to his parents‘ old age (Robert was 55 years old and Barbara was 41 years old when CWC was born) Robert and Barbara, however, refused to seek proper treatment for CWC‘s autism, resorting to bribing CWC with toys to get him to speak and paying children in CWC‘s school to befriend him Robert rejected the offer of CWC‘s primary school to send him to a special education school, for fear of discrimination CWC had little contact with the outside world due to his parents‘ coddling, and lived with his parents even when he entered adulthood Today, as a 36-year-old, he still lives with his mother in her house He currently holds no job and his main source of income is from begging for money online, a large amount of which goes to purchasing toys

Due to his parents‘ coddling, CWC was unable to learn how to behave properly As a college student at Piedmont Virginia Community College, he was infamous for socially inappropriate behavior and temper tantrums At around this time, CWC started posting Vblog on Youtube detailing his daily life, under the impression that he was a famous person He also started a comic series called

Sonichu, about a creature formed from two already existing characters Sonic and

Pikachu However, as the series progressed, the story shifted toward CWC and his anger toward people who had ―wronged‖ him

CWC‘s erratic behavior and the Sonichu comics soon caught the attention of the internet Several malicious people, or ―internet trolls‖, started to tease and harass CWC to get a reaction from him Their tricks proved to be a massive success since CWC had little understanding of the outside world due to his autism and social isolation and thus either reacted violently to the harassment or fell prey to obvious tricks Most of the trolls‘ teasing and harassment targeted CWC‘s obsession of having a girlfriend The period of 2008 and 2012 saw the most confrontation between CWC and the trolls

Embarrassing details of CWC‘s life started to be leaked through chat logs, emails, oral and written accounts, and videos These details excited the trolls and they made more effort to harass CWC, and CWC fell into every one of their traps This cycle of harassment spanned for several years Today, the website CWCki is under public domain and is still updated frequently by the trolls as more of CWC‘s embarrassing behavior continues to be seen in public

2.3 SUMMARY

This chapter outlines the theoretical backgrounds necessary for the process

of the study Among the theoretical backgrounds mentioned, the most important backgrounds that serve as the framework for this study are the Theory of Mind (Goldman, 2012), indirect speech act (Searle, 1979), literal and non-literal speech acts (Searle & Vandereken, 1985; Recanati, 2002), metaphors, metonymy and irony (Chandler, 2007) In addition, this chapter also provides a brief description of CWC‘s life

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research design for investigating the pragmatic features in the language products of a high-functioning autistic individual, specifically those of CWC The chapter details how the research is designed and conducted for obtaining information about features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s speech act compared to those of neurotypicals The materials, data collection procedures and data analyses are also presented to answer the research questions

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

This research employed the design of a case-study, which is defined as ―an intensive study of one subject with the aim to understanding a larger class of units‖ (Gerring, 2004, p 342) This design was used to analyze the literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s speech act in order to discover the literal and non-literal utterances in the speech act of high-functioning autistic as a whole

3.2 RESEARCH METHODS

The Discourse Analysis method, which is a method of analyzing written and spoken language beyond the sematic usage of language and focusing on the social context where the language is used (Salkind, 2010), was used to analyze spoken and written conversations between CWC and the neurotypicals, from 2008 to 2012 The purpose of this analysis was to explore the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s speech act The theoretical framework employed in this study was the Theory of Mind (Goldman, 2012), indirect speech act (Searle, 1979), literal and non-literal speech acts (Searle & Vandereken, 1985; Recanati, 2002), metaphors, metonymy and irony (Chandler, 2007) This included the analyses of literal and non-literal speech acts, including metaphors, metonymy and irony, which are often also present in non-literal utterances

3.3 PROCEDURES

3.3.1 Data Collection

The data used for analysis were taken from phone call recordings and emails from the website CWCki (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/) Due to the sophistication of the contexts surrounding each phone calls and emails, prior to data collection and sampling, the researcher had to be familiarized with the background information of CWC and his encounters with the trolls on the Internet, particularly during the period of 2007 and 2012, when CWC‘s interaction with the Internet was at its highest This procedure was done by reading through various articles on the website

CWCki and analyzing Youtube videos CWC posted It is worth noticing that the

articles on CWCki, while abundant in resources related to CWC, was also heavy in

personal bias of the contributors Therefore, it was important that only objective facts were taken into account during the research into the background of CWC

In the initial stage of the analysis, the researcher created a framework of criteria for data collection The recordings and emails chosen had to meet the following criteria: (1) conversations were based on specific contexts; (2) conversations should be long enough to ensure consistency in language patterns and/or extending over a consistent period of time (from less than a month to nearly two months); and (3) conversations should involve both CWC and the neurotypicals‘ active participation (one-on-one conversations) These criteria ensure that the data collected involves conversations between CWC and neurotypicals in a natural interaction setting, that the conversations occur in the same time period, and that the conversations are rooted in clear contexts for discourse analysis

The website CWCki provides an image showing the main events (called

―sagas‖ by the website) in CWC‘s life during each year, based on the trolls he interacted with This image provided the researcher with a concise summary of the important events in CWC‘s life and the necessary contexts for many of the phone call recordings and emails on the website The researcher used the image as the starting point to look for the suitable data that met the above-mentioned criteria

Figure 3.1 The timeline of the main events of CWC‟s life from 2008 to 2012 (taken

and edited from https://sonichu.com/w/images/0/0d/Timeline.png)

37 phone call recordings and 290 emails that met the three above-mentioned criteria were chosen to be analyzed Out of the 37 phone call recordings, 35 of them were one-on-one phone calls between CWC and two neurotypicals, 26 of which spanned from August 3rd, 2009 to November 10th, 2009, and nine of which spanned from January 22nd, 2010 to February 25th, 2010 One of the other two phone calls was between CWC and a different person, and the other phone call was between CWC and two people These two phone calls were directly related to the twenty-six

2009 phone calls In the case of emails, all 290 emails were exchanges between CWC and several different people, none of whom was the same throughout the email exchange, despite the emails being based on the same context These emails spanned from November 20th, 2009 to December 7th, 2009

Figure 3.2 summarizes the data used for analysis

Figure 3.2 Details of the data collected for analysis

Data Spoken texts

1 phone call from CWC, Kacey and

"Liquid Chris"

(between 4th and 10th November, 2009)

9 phone call recording between CWC and Alec (from January

22nd, 2010 to February 25th, 2010)

Written texts

290 emails between CWC and his fans (from November

20th, 2009 to December 7th, 2009)

These phone call recordings and emails were chosen not only because they met the three above-mentioned criteria, but also due to the nature of the conversations involved In many conversations between CWC and the neurotypicals, the neurotypicals were trolls and CWC were mostly provoked and infuriated by them However, in the collected phone call recordings and emails, CWC was not aware that the neurotypicals were trolls, and the trolls did not attempt to reveal who they were to him; therefore, he communicated with the neurotypicals naturally This ensures that the conversation environment CWC was involved in was a neutral environment, similar to that which a high-functioning autistic person is likely to encounter in real life

It is worth mentioning that during the data collection process, a chat log, 84 emails and 12 phone call recordings were collected However, they were later excluded from the research for not meeting the above-mentioned criteria That is, the emails and phone call recordings were not based on any particular context, and the chat log was not long enough for sampling

3.3.2 Data coding

3.3.2.1 Coder

Two coders were involved in the process of data coding One coder was the researcher The researcher graduated from University of Foreign Language Studies – the University of Danang, Vietnam in 2017 with a bachelor degree in English Pedagogy She has been familiarized with CWC for two years and had some experience with autistic children from her work as a translator for a therapist of an autistic child The other coder graduated from the same university as the researcher

in 2019 with a bachelor degree in English Linguistics She had experience in the field of pragmatics

3.3.2.2 Coder training

The coders were trained to identify instances of literal and non-literal utterances in spoken and written conversation between CWC and neurotypicals The first coder was firstly asked to do research on CWC in order to acquire an objective

understanding of CWC‘s background and major events in his life The first coder was also asked to familiarize herself with Theory of Mind, literal and non-literal utterances After the coders were familiarized with these concepts, they were exposed

to some models of spoken and written texts (that were also used in the data analysis) They were the phone call between CWC and Kacey‘s ―father‖ (November 4th, 2009) and the first 31 emails between CWC and his fans (started on November 20th, 2009) The purpose of the exposure to the texts was for the coders to agree on the meaning

of the symbols used during data coding Table 3.1 illustrates the symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s spoken language and their meanings Table 3.1 Symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s spoken language

and their meanings

1 Yellow highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical‘s statement, and his

response did not take into account the non-literal meaning of the neurotypical‘s illocutionary force

2 Blue highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical‘s statement, and his

response took into account the non-literal meaning of the neurotypical‘s illocutionary force

3 Purple highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical statement by repeating

the word/phrase the neurotypical used During the data coding process of CWC‘s written language, the same system

of symbols was used However, the symbols and their meanings were slightly altered due to the nature of the written language Table 3.2 shows the symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s written language and their meanings

Table 3.2 Symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘s written language

and their meanings

1 Yellow highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical‘s statement, and his

response did not take into account the non-liteal meaning of the neurotypical‘s illocutionary force

2 Blue highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical‘s statement, and his

response took into account the non-literal meaning of the neurotypical‘s illocutionary force

3 Green highlight CWC responded to several statements in a

neurotypical‘s email without separating them

3.3.2.3 Reliability estimate of coding

After the coding process, the results produced by the two coders are presented in Tables 3.3 and 3.4

Table 3.3 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘s spoken language

Table 3.4 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘s written language

Kappa is 0.81, suggesting that the inter-coder agreement was high These results suggest that the coding of the data was reasonably reliable

3.3.3 Data analysis

After the researcher was familiarized with the context surrounding CWC, data were selected and analyzed for samples Instances of literal and non-literal utterances, metaphors, metonymy and irony were detected and analyzed, with consideration to the contexts surrounding these instances This research defines literal utterances as the utterances which express a literal force and content within the context (Searle & Vandereken, 1985), and the utterances that are considered non-literal are the one that makes a significant, or ―nonminimal‖ departure from the literal meaning (Recanati, 2001) The research also uses the definition of metaphors,

metonymy and irony from the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2019) Accordingly,

metaphors is defined as ―a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers

to one thing by mentioning another.‖; metonymy is defined as ―a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated‖; and irony is defined as ―the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning‖

Since metaphors, metonymy and irony are often present in non-literal utterances (Searle & Vandereken, 1985), this research included the analysis of metaphors, metonymy and irony during the analysis of non-literal utterances

RQ1: What are the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC’s spoken language?

In order to answer this research question, instances of literal and non-literal utterances, metaphors, metonymy and irony were analyzed Three factors were considered during the analysis: (1) whether CWC‘s statement was directly related to the neurotypical‘s earlier statement; if so, what statement specifically; (2) the context surrounding the statement; and (3) the specific moment in time of the statement, as several phone calls were made between CWC and one person over a considerable span of time Each connection between the neurotypical‘s statement

and CWC‘s response was mostly made during the course of one phone call The larger contexts surrounding the phone call were also considered in order to determine the specific context of the particular conversation, and whether CWC‘s language was also influenced by outside factors (whether CWC was under stress during the conversation, the background information surrounding the conversation, etc) The spoken language analysis was presented in chorological order, so that the development of CWC‘s language patterns could be analyzed

A sample of a phone call recording and an email exchange is as follows: Example 1 (phone call recording, extracted from https://sonichu.com/cwcki/ Father_Call#Literature_and_Health_.281:02:35-1:13:17.29)

[…]

Matthew: Yesss man, you call yourself smart? You aren't smart enough

for Kacey I mean, when did you-when did you read this?

Chris: I I've read it, about a month ago

Matthew: A month ago

Chris: Yeah

Matthew: I-you know, I think the last book Kacey read was last week And

she reads books, y'know, she reads books like you probably stuff candy down your throat

Chris: [rage button pushed] Stuff candy don't I stuff vegetables down

my throat! I stuff green beans! I stuff broccoli! I stuff corn! I stuff carrots!

Matthew: Wooooowww! [laughs] What the fuck are you talking about? I

mean, I don't even know what the hell

Chris: I eat and drink healthy

[…]

The sample extract is a phone conversation between CWC and a man called Matthew In the extract, Matthew was criticizing CWC‘s reading habit, particularly the fact that CWC did not read as many books as he claimed to Matthew compared CWC‘s reading habit to that of Kacey, his daughter As he did so, he applied the

metaphor effect by drawing parallels between the number of books Kacey read to the number of candy CWC could probably eat His intention of using the metaphor was to imply that Kacey read more books than CWC CWC‘s response, however, did not take into account the use of this metaphor CWC‘s response treated the utterance ―stuff candy‖ as the literal semantic meaning of the utterance, and referred

to things belonging to the same semantic group as ―candy‖ (green beans, broccoli, corn, carrots) The intention of CWC‘s statement was to clarify that CWC ate healthily Thus, CWC‘s statement completely ignored the intention behind Matthew‘s statement while focusing only on the literal semantic meaning of one word, taking the conversation to a different direction from the original discussion

RQ2: What are the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC’s written language?

To answer this research question, the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s spoken language, metaphors, metonymy and irony in email exchange between CWC and neurotypicals CWC‘s direct responses to the neurotypical‘s statement in his reply to each email were analyzed As with the spoken language analysis, the context surrounding the statements and the specific moment in time of the emails were considered The larger contexts surrounding the emails were also analyzed for the above-mentioned purposes

A sample of an email exchange is as follows:

https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Mailbag_2#On_the_Sonichu_remake)

From: Gabriel Monteiro <gabmonteiro9389@hotmail.com>

Hello, Mr Chandler o/

I see that you have added my vision of the Sonichu pages in your favorites Gallery,

on Deviant Art ( http://gabmonteiro9389.deviantart.com/ ) I'd like to say this is a great honor for me, and to ask of you some criticism and comments on them, if it's

no asking to much Like, what was your favorite page, or favorite frame It would