In the last few years, I have become interested in shifting the predominantly cognitive focus of mental health research by considering more fully the role of everyday sociality. For instance, my 2015 article聽Mass Hysteria in Le Roy, New York听飞颈迟丑听聽regarding an alleged case of mass hysteria in an area known for extreme forms of environmental toxicity,聽published in the journal American Ethnologist,聽demonstrates the need for more attention to the social role of expertise in influencing popular understandings of the brain.
My main interest, however, is in turning the lens of sociality onto linguistic manifestations of autism, particularly in regard to what scholars have observed as the unique 鈥榠ntonation pattern鈥� of persons on the autism spectrum. While researchers have focused almost exclusively on such phenomena as cognitive, I am interested in the ways that persons with autism use language strategically to navigate their social worlds, a point convincingly made by a small but growing number of linguistic anthropologists.
My specific research regards a sociolinguistic practice popularly associated with Asperger鈥檚 but rarely analyzed: the prolonged and fluent adoption of non-local dialect features, or in laymen鈥檚 terms, 鈥渇oreign accent.鈥� For sociolinguists who view second dialect acquisition as a difficult social achievement importantly related to identity, this practice presents a paradox. How do individuals associated with such a purportedly 鈥渁social鈥� syndrome accomplish an activity that is by all accounts intensely social? I am currently attempting to investigate this paradox through combined use of ethnographic and discourse analytic methodologies.