No Cover Image

Journal article 329 views 32 downloads

From anonymous subject to engaged stakeholder: Enriching participant experience in autistic-language-use research

Gemma Williams Orcid Logo

Research for All, Volume: 4, Issue: 2

Swansea University Author: Gemma Williams Orcid Logo

  • 63312.pdf

    PDF | Version of Record

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

    Download (234.86KB)

Check full text

DOI (Published version): 10.14324/rfa.04.2.13

Abstract

The Talking Together community-engagement pilot project brought together pairs of autistic and non-autistic strangers to: (1) talk about their experiences of loneliness in their local city; and (2) think about potential, co-produced responses to the problem. The project had evolved as a secondary ai...

Full description

Published in: Research for All
ISSN: 2399-8121
Published: UCL Press 2020
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63312
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Abstract: The Talking Together community-engagement pilot project brought together pairs of autistic and non-autistic strangers to: (1) talk about their experiences of loneliness in their local city; and (2) think about potential, co-produced responses to the problem. The project had evolved as a secondary aim, from an initial need to acquire naturalistic conversation data for my linguistic PhD research investigating a theoretical reframing of autistic language use as ‘different’ rather than ‘deficient’. The desire to make the data collection a meaningful experience for the participants in its own right was central to the research design, and so the Talking Together loneliness project was devised as a way to achieve this. However, it was not until the research was under way that the potential for valuable, immediate impact became apparent. This article reflects on the successes and challenges of the Talking Together pilot as a piece of autistic-led participatory research, and explores how the principles of engaged, participatory research can be applied so as to maximize impact, even where engagement may not be a primary aim. It also explores the ‘participatory’ nature of participatory research where the researcher belongs to the marginalized stakeholder group.
College: Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
Issue: 2