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

Specifically, this study attempted to identify the features of literaland non-literal utterances in CWC‘s spoken and written language and examined theconnections between CWC‘s spoken and

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

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

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

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains nomaterial published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which

I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma

No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgements in thethesis

This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma inany other tertiary institution

Da Nang, May 2020

Nguyen Le Thuy Tien

One of the most universal traits of high functioning autistic people is thedifficulty in language production This creates several problems for autistic peoplewhen interacting with neurotypicals, putting them at risk of being discriminatedagainst and misunderstood (Asperger, 1991) However, little has been done on thisphenomenon, as most previous research on language of autistic people onlyproduced 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 almostalways autistic children and adolescents, leaving a gap in the literature which is thelanguage of autistic adults Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the pragmaticfeatures in the spoken and written language products of high-functioning autisticpeople, through the case study of Christian Weston Chandler (CWC), a high-functioning autistic man who did not receive proper treatment for his autismthroughout his life Specifically, this study attempted to identify the features of literaland non-literal utterances in CWC‘s spoken and written language and examined theconnections between CWC‘s spoken and written language Based on the DiscourseAnalysis method (Salkind, 2010), the data from 37 phone calls and 290 emailsbetween CWC and several different neurotypicals were qualitatively analyzed Thesephone calls and emails were analyzed separately in order to identify the mainfeatures of CWC‘s spoken language and written language CWC‘s spoken languagewere then compared with his written language in order to examine the connectionsbetween his spoken and written language The findings suggested that both CWC‘sspoken and written language shared two main features: The first is the mismatchbetween the non-literal utterances in the neurotypicals‘ statements and the literalutterances in CWC‘s responses, and the second is the conformation of the responses

to the intention behind the neurotypicals‘ statements However, the literal - literal conformation was more apparent in written texts than in spoken texts, and the

non-literal - non-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 nosuch increase in his written language There are also two other features, each ofwhich was unique to either CWC‘s spoken or written language They are thetendency to repeat the neurotypicals‘ statements word-by-word (in spoken language),and the tendency to group multiple responses to the neuropicals‘ statements into oneparagraph without clarifying which statement was being addressed (in writtenlanguage) However, there was a few instances in CWC‘s written language when healso repeated the neurotypicals‘ statements, and this tendency was somewhat linked

to the decrease in grouping tendency in CWC‘s response - that is - CWC was morelikely to separate his responses with ordinal adverbs or numbers if the neurotypicalsalso did the same in their emails Overall, although there were instances whenCWC‘s responses conformed to the intention behind the neurotypicals‘ statements,the frequency of this happening was low and inconsistent Thus, it is advisable forteachers, medical staff, social workers and the general public to limit the use of non-literal utterances when communicating with high-functioning autistic people Duringcommunication, they should express their point as clear and concise as possible It isalso necessary that they should not assume bad intention from high-functioningautistic people when miscommunication occurs Medical staff and social workerscan 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‘sspoken language and their meanings 243.2 Symbols used during the data coding process of CWC‘swritten language and their meanings. 253.3 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘sspoken language 253.4 Results of two coders from the coding process of CWC‘swritten language 254.1 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘sspoken language in each phone call with Kacey 37

4.2

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

spoken language in the 28 phone calls from August 3rd,

2009 to November 10th, 2009

49

4.3 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘sspoken language in each phone call with Alec 554.4 Distribution of the instances of the three features of CWC‘swritten language in each Mailbag section 645.1 Features of CWC‘s spoken and written language and theirrelationship to each other 79

LIST OF FIGURES

Number of

3.1

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

to 2012 (taken and edited fromhttps://sonichu.com/w/images/0/0d/Timeline.png)

213.2 Details of the data collected for analysis 224.1 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken languagein the 28 phone calls 374.2 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken languagein the phone call with Matthew 474.3 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s spoken languagein the phone call with Alec 544.4 Numbers of the three features of CWC‘s written languagein the 290 phone calls 63

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 tointroduce the basic framework for the whole research

1.1 RATIONALE

Language production does not only involve the comprehension of thelanguage itself, but also a good understanding of the context involved in thecommunication environment, and how to maintain the conversation in a way thatlines up with the expectation of the people involved (for example, how to helppeople save face) The latter depends largely on the ability to understand otherpeople’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 bondwith people

Autistic people are born without this natural ability Even high-functioningautistic 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 toapply language in a socially appropriate way As a result, they are forced to developlanguage in the way that they think is right, which can be completely different fromthe —right” way neurotypical people use their language This creates severalproblems for autistic people when communicating with the world High-functioningautistic 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 languageproblem remains

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

every neurotypical person has As a result, neurotypicals fail to acknowledge thatautistic people have a significant problem with communication, and mostneurotypicals think this inability to communicate appropriately is due to the autisticpeople being deliberately rude and disrespectful to social rules instead of having anactual problem This discrimination is much more profound in high-functioningautistic people, who display less noticeable traits of autism and can be mistaken forneurotypicals It is also worth noticing that this ability, though innate, is extremelycomplex and difficult to explain in a literal way; thus, even when neurotypicals areable to acknowledge the communication problem, it is still very difficult andfrustrating for the neurotypicals to explain to autistic people how to communicateappropriately.

Consider this example of Attwood (2007, p.11-12), depicting Jack, a boy withAsperger‘s syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism This conversation issupposed to take place during the birthday party of Jack‘s friend Alicia, betweenJack and the girl‘s mother This is the first time the mother has met Jack, and shedoes 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 hispresent, 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 mothercan 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 veryawkward direction; and without prior knowledge of Jack’s autism, the mother maymisunderstand Jack’s intention, thinking he has no communication manner

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

One extremely peculiar case of high-functioning autism is Christian WestonChandler (CWC) CWC is a high-functioning autistic man whose autism was notproperly treated and who is infamous on the Internet for his autism Born on 24th

February, 1982, in Virginia, USA, to Robert and Barbara Chandler, CWC displayedsigns of autism as a child and received a diagnosis for autism His autism wasprobably caused by a gene defect due to his parents’ old age (Robert was 55 yearsold 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 bribingCWC with toys to get him to speak and paying children in CWC’s school to befriendhim 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 wasunable to learn how to behave properly His erratic behavior, strange manner ofspeech, and the comic Sonichu that he created soon caught the attention of theinternet Several malicious people, or —internet trolls”, started to tease and harassCWC to get a reaction from him The harassing went on for several years, causingsignificantly 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 isapparent 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 behaviortoward Megan Schroeder, a friend of CWC that cut tie with him after hepublished a nude drawing of her and refused to take responsibility for hisaction

5 Delayed mental development Throughout his interaction, and particularly hiscommunication, he displays the mental capability of someone far youngerthan 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 leavehome 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 atthe website CWCki (https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Main Page) It is rare to see suchdetailed documentation on an autistic person‘s life Therefore, CWC‘s life providesgood resources to study the difficulties that high-functioning autistic people facewhen communicating with other people Through the analysis of CWC‘s life, onecan expect to discover valuable information on how high- functioning autistic peoplecommunicate and the misunderstandings that they encounter everyday.

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

1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

1.2.1 Aims

This study aims to analyze the spoken and written language features of CWC interms of pragmatics, specifically the literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘sspeech act In particular, the study analyzes spoken and written discourse betweenCWC and the neurotypicals with whom he interacted

1 What are the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s spokenlanguage?

2 What are the features of literal and non-literal utterances in CWC‘s writtenlanguage?

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 Thisstudy 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 ahigh-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 theperiod of 2008 and 2012, since this is the period that saw the most noteworthyinteraction 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 wayhigh-functioning autistic people produce language and, from these findings, explainthe misunderstandings in communication between high-functioning autistic peopleand neurotypicals, from obvious to subtle The results of the study can provide usefulinsights for educators, medical staff, social workers and the general public so thatthey can come up with ways to better interact with high-functioning autistic peopleand 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 theaim, objectives and research questions of the study The outline of this paper is alsoincluded in this chapter

Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background

This chapter provides a detailed outline of the theoretical background whichclarifies some important concepts of the study Previous studies related to languageuse 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 researchmethods, 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 throughqualitative 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 autisticpeople Almost studies focus on some general language features of autistic people,particularly autistic children

It has been suggested that high-functioning autistic adolescents speak inmonologue tone during interpersonal conversation such as interviews (Ghaziuddin &Gerstein, 1996; Ramberg, Ehlers, Nyden, Johansson, & Gillberg, 1996) and haveproblems providing appropriate response to questions and clear references to peopleand places in conversations (Adams, Green, Gilchrist, & Cox, 2002; Fine, Bartolucci,Szatmari, & Ginsberg, 1994) Surian, Baron-Cohen, and Van der Lely (1996) addedthat they also have difficulties judging the amount of information to be included inthe responses

In terms of language reception, autistic people have problems interpretingfigurative speech, particularly with idiom, metaphor and irony (Happé, 1993; Kerbel

& Grunwell, 1998; Martin & McDonald, 2004) Specifically, autistic people are notgood at interpreting the intention behind a speech act of the speakers and tend tointerpret utterance literally (Mitchell, Saltmarsh, & Russell, 1997)

In terms of formulaic speech, which is defined as word sequences that areprefabricated, stored and retrieved from memory (Wray & Perkins, 2000), the speech

of autistic people bears distinctive features Some of the features are: repetitive andstereotyped 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 amentally 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 asbelief, knowledge and emotion (Baron-Cohen, 1993; Hobson, 1993), leading toabnormalities 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 studieswere done on the grounds of constructing a general profile of language features ofautistic people, and some of them were done in an artificial laboratory environment(For example, Fine et al (1994) collected their data through 10-minute conversationsbetween their subjects and an examiner; Surian et al (1996) asked their subjects towatch a play performed by the researchers) How the language abnormalities impactcommunication between autistic people and neurotypicals in a natural interactionsetting has not been thoroughly researched

the connection between language and theory of mind —has been a matter of somedebate 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 animportant role in language production According to Milligan, Astington, and Dack(2007), language abilities does not only include semantics and syntax, but alsopragmatics, which is the capacity to input and produce language properly duringcommunication activities Theory of mind is important in the process ofunderstanding the pragmatics aspect of language, as it involves understanding otherpeople‘s mental states.

Autistic people, however, lack theory of mind, and therefore face greatdifficulty in communicating effectively Their lack of theory of mind can bedescribed as —mind blindness” (Baron-Cohen, 1990, p 88) They cannot understandthe 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 isone of the main symptoms of autism

2.2.1.2 Autism

Autism, or Autism spectrum disorder (ADS), —refers to a group of pervasiveneurodevelopmental disorders that involve moderately to severely disruptedfunctioning in regard to social skills and socialization, expressive and receptivecommunication, and repetitive or stereotyped behaviors and interests” (Pennington,Cullinan, & Southern, 2014, p 1) According to The Diagnostic and StatisticalManual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), people with autism have severaldeficits in —social-emotional reciprocity”, —non-verbal communicative behaviorsused for social interaction” and —developing, maintaining and understandingrelationships” Autistic people have considerable difficulty in forming relationshipswith 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 whoshow severe symptoms The former show better intelligence and social skills than thelatter 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: AspergerSyndrome (AS), and high-, medium-, and low-functioning autism (Baron-Cohen,2006) People with high-functioning autism and AS differ from other people withother 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 andhigh-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 spokenlanguage to communicate more than low functioning people; are more likely to beable to be aware of others‘ expectations (though with much less competence than aneurotypical); 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 themisunderstandings they face)

c Delayed echolalia

Echolalia is defined as —the socially awkward or inappropriate verbatimrepetition 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 isabout 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 Munchau (2012) noted that a child learns newbehaviors by imitating, and echolalia occurs when the child attempts to reenact apreviously acquired vocal behavior After the age of three, echolalia becomes lesscommon as the child acquires language skills (Ganos et al., 2012) However, autisticpeople retain echolalia even after they pass the age of three Due to their inability tobond with people, autistic people‘s sources of echolalia often come from television oraudio 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 incommunication” There are two types of utterances: —Propositional meaning orlocutionary 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 orwritten text has on the reader or the listener Austin (1962) further expanded thedefinition of speech act by introducing the term —performatives” A performative isdefined 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 relatedacts They are: —locutionary act”, the basic act of utterance that produce ameaningful linguistic expression and carries the semantic meanings of the words; —illocutionary act”, which focuses on the intention that we have in mind when weproduce an utterance (also known as the illocutionary force of an utterance); and —perlocutionary act”, which focuses on the effect the speaker intend his or herutterance 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 willimply two possibilities: the speaker either request the hearer to open the window orexpress his or her refusal to close the window because he or she feels hot Theperlocutionary 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 intentionassociated with it Searle (1969) classified illocutionary acts into the followingcategory: —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 implicitones Explicit performatives employs the use of performative verb(s), while inimplicit performatives, the verb(s) does not appear explicitly, but have to beinterpreted from the utterance Using explicit performatives for a command has muchmore 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 thespeaker in many circumstances.

An example of explicit performative vs implicit performative is the twoutterances 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 anddelivers a literal message There is no possibility of misunderstanding in thisutterance The second utterance, however, is also a command but is uttered as aninterrogative sentence It is rather ambiguous without an appropriate context, sincethere 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 toexpress 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 anoffer to go out, rather than to state a literal fact that he/she has some work to do athis/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 andcontent within the context Recanati (2002) also defined a literal meaning of anexpression 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 ofmetaphors, 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 whenthe speaker‘s intention is to ask for a meal for James, which is a significant departurefrom the literal meaning Recanati (2002) stated that non-literal meaning is often —secondary meaning” (Recanati, 2002, p.266), which is a deprivation from apresupposed primary meaning

According to Searle and Vanderken (1985), non-literal utterances oftenmanifested 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 mentioninganother.” Chandler (2007, p 127) stated that metaphors —involves one signifiedacting as a signifier referring to a different signified” Metaphors requires readers orhearers to go beyond the dictionary meaning of words in order to understand the trueintention 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 entitiesand substances (for example: personification );

- Structural metaphors: combining the above two types in order to allow us tostructure 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 makesconnections among unrelated concept, metonymy combines two signified with areclosely related to each other (Chandler, 2007) Chandler (2007) complied a list ofmost frequently used metonymies as:

1) Effect for cause (—Don‘t get hot under the collar!” for —Don‘t getangry!”);

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 Cambridgeuniversity‘s staff members)

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) also commented on some other types ofmetonymies 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 connectingtwo 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 —Ilove it” when in reality he or she intent to say he or she hates it Comprehension ofirony —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 CWCdisplayed signs of autism as a child and received a diagnosis for autism His autismwas probably caused by a gene defect due to his parents‘ old age (Robert was 55years 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 bribingCWC with toys to get him to speak and paying children in CWC‘s school to befriendhim Robert rejected the offer of CWC‘s primary school to send him to a specialeducation school, for fear of discrimination CWC had little contact with the outsideworld due to his parents‘ coddling, and lived with his parents even when he enteredadulthood Today, as a 36-year-old, he still lives with his mother in her house Hecurrently holds no job and his main source of income is from begging for moneyonline, a large amount of which goes to purchasing toys

Due to his parents‘ coddling, CWC was unable to learn how to behaveproperly As a college student at Piedmont Virginia Community College, he wasinfamous for socially inappropriate behavior and temper tantrums At around thistime, CWC started posting Vblog on Youtube detailing his daily life, under theimpression 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 hisanger toward people who had —wronged” him

CWC‘s erratic behavior and the Sonichu comics soon caught the attention ofthe internet Several malicious people, or —internet trolls”, started to tease andharass CWC to get a reaction from him Their tricks proved to be a massive successsince CWC had little understanding of the outside world due to his autism and socialisolation and thus either reacted violently to the harassment or fell prey to obvioustricks Most of the trolls‘ teasing and harassment targeted CWC‘s obsession ofhaving a girlfriend The period of 2008 and 2012 saw the most confrontation betweenCWC 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 andthey 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 isunder public domain and is still updated frequently by the trolls as more of CWC‘sembarrassing behavior continues to be seen in public

2.3 SUMMARY

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

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY

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

3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

This research employed the design of a case-study, which is defined as —anintensive 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-literalutterances in CWC‘s speech act in order to discover the literal and non-literalutterances 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 andspoken language beyond the sematic usage of language and focusing on the socialcontext where the language is used (Salkind, 2010), was used to analyze spoken andwritten conversations between CWC and the neurotypicals, from 2008 to 2012 Thepurpose of this analysis was to explore the features of literal and non-literalutterances in CWC’s speech act The theoretical framework employed in this studywas the Theory of Mind (Goldman, 2012), indirect speech act (Searle, 1979), literaland 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 alsopresent in non-literal utterances

3.3 PROCEDURES

3.3.1 Data Collection

The data used for analysis were taken from phone call recordings and emailsfrom the website CWCki ( https://sonichu.com/cwcki/ ) Due to the sophistication ofthe contexts surrounding each phone calls and emails, prior to data collection andsampling, the researcher had to be familiarized with the background information ofCWC 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 takeninto account during the research into the background of CWC

In the initial stage of the analysis, the researcher created a framework ofcriteria for data collection The recordings and emails chosen had to meet thefollowing criteria: (1) conversations were based on specific contexts; (2)conversations should be long enough to ensure consistency in language patternsand/or extending over a consistent period of time (from less than a month to nearlytwo months); and (3) conversations should involve both CWC and the neurotypicals‘active participation (one-on-one conversations) These criteria ensure that the datacollected involves conversations between CWC and neurotypicals in a naturalinteraction setting, that the conversations occur in the same time period, and that theconversations 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 heinteracted with This image provided the researcher with a concise summary of theimportant events in CWC’s life and the necessary contexts for many of the phonecall recordings and emails on the website The researcher used the image as thestarting 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-mentionedcriteria were chosen to be analyzed Out of the 37 phone call recordings, 35 of themwere one-on-one phone calls between CWC and two neurotypicals, 26 of whichspanned from August 3rd, 2009 to November 10th, 2009, and nine of which spannedfrom January 22nd, 2010 to February 25th, 2010 One of the other two phone calls wasbetween CWC and a different person, and the other phone call was between CWC andtwo people These two phone calls were directly related to the twenty-six 2009 phonecalls In the case of emails, all 290 emails were exchanges between CWC and severaldifferent people, none of whom was the same throughout the email exchange, despitethe 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

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

It is worth mentioning that during the data collection process, a chat log, 84emails and 12 phone call recordings were collected However, they were laterexcluded from the research for not meeting the above-mentioned criteria That is, theemails and phone call recordings were not based on any particular context, and thechat 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 theresearcher The researcher graduated from University of Foreign Language Studies -the University of Danang, Vietnam in 2017 with a bachelor degree in EnglishPedagogy She has been familiarized with CWC for two years and had someexperience with autistic children from her work as a translator for a therapist of anautistic 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 ofpragmatics

3.3.2.2 Coder training

The coders were trained to identify instances of literal and non-literalutterances in spoken and written conversation between CWC and neurotypicals Thefirst 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 wasalso asked to familiarize herself with Theory of Mind, literal and non-literalutterances 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 ofthe symbols used during data coding Table 3.1 illustrates the symbols used during thedata 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-literalmeaning 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 theneurotypical’s illocutionary force

3 Purple highlight CWC responded to a neurotypical statement by repeating

the word/phrase the neurotypical usedDuring the data coding process of CWC’s written language, the same system

of symbols was used However, the symbols and their meanings were slightly altereddue to the nature of the written language Table 3.2 shows the symbols used during thedata 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-litealmeaning 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 ofthe 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

Results Coder 1 Coder 2

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

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, datawere selected and analyzed for samples Instances of literal and non-literal utterances,metaphors, metonymy and irony were detected and analyzed, with consideration to thecontexts surrounding these instances This research defines literal utterances as theutterances which express a literal force and content within the context (Searle &Vandereken, 1985), and the utterances that are considered non-literal are the one thatmakes 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 mentioninganother.”; metonymy is defined as —a figure of speech consisting of the use of thename of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it isassociated”; and irony is defined as —the use of words to express something otherthan and especially the opposite of the literal meaning”

Since metaphors, metonymy and irony are often present in non-literalutterances (Searle & Vandereken, 1985), this research included the analysis ofmetaphors, 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-literalutterances, metaphors, metonymy and irony were analyzed Three factors wereconsidered during the analysis: (1) whether CWC’s statement was directly related tothe neurotypical’s earlier statement; if so, what statement specifically; (2) the contextsurrounding the statement; and (3) the specific moment in time of the statement, asseveral phone calls were made between CWC and one person over a considerablespan of time Each connection between the neurotypical’s statement and CWC’sresponse 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 specificcontext of the particular conversation, and whether CWC’s language was alsoinfluenced by outside factors (whether CWC was under stress during the conversation,the background information surrounding the conversation, etc) The spoken languageanalysis was presented in chorological order, so that the development of CWC’slanguage 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 yourthroat

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 calledMatthew In the extract, Matthew was criticizing CWC’s reading habit, particularlythe fact that CWC did not read as many books as he claimed to Matthew comparedCWC’s reading habit to that of Kacey, his daughter As he did so, he applied themetaphor effect by drawing parallels between the number of books Kacey read to thenumber 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 nottake 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 thingsbelonging to the same semantic group as —candy” (green beans, broccoli, corn,carrots) The intention of CWC’s statement was to clarity that CWC ate healthily.Thus, CWC‘s statement completely ignored the intention behind Matthew‘s statementwhile focusing only on the literal semantic meaning of one word, taking theconversation 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-literalutterances in CWC’s spoken language, metaphors, metonymy and irony in emailexchange between CWC and neurotypicals CWC‘s direct responses to theneurotypical’s statement in his reply to each email were analyzed As with the spokenlanguage analysis, the context surrounding the statements and the specific moment intime of the emails were considered The larger contexts surrounding the emails werealso 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, onDeviant Art ( http://gabmonteiro93 89.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 be a honor for me to hear more form you on that matter Thank you so much for favoriting

my work I look forward for more of the 20th episode of Sonichu on your oficial site, the CWCipedia! Best of luck for you