Valentina Pineyro
Research Mentor: Barbra Meek
Mentor Department: Anthropology & Linguistics, LSA
Author(s): Elizabeth Ansen, Valentina Pineyro, Barbra Meek, Moniek van Rheenen
Session: Session 7 (4:00 PM – 4:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 12
Abstract
All humans are unique, but while some are encouraged to embrace their differences, others are taught to see these as a liability. This is especially true for neurodivergent people, whose ways of thinking and socializing diverge from a neurotypical standard. When traits of their neurodivergence manifest– such as their blunt communication styles and inappropriate responses to social cues– they become typified in a way that marginalizes and “others” individuals with those traits. Unlike in real life, neurodivergent traits in characters from popular media are written by screenwriters and animated by actors. Building on other studies of social difference in language and media, we examine how neurodivergence is characterized as a social identity. Our research examines and compares linguistic features associated with one form of neurodivergence, autism, in two comedies. We selected and clipped comparable scenes from the Canadian film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) and the American TV series Resident Alien (2021-2025); they were selected for their autistic-coded protagonists and their origins as comic books. We transcribed scenes, imported the master transcripts into the corpus-based software AntConc, and searched for linguistic patterns (word choice, vocabulary, etc.) in the dialogue. Our analysis was informed by scholarly literature on autistic sociality. We found that the traits of our autistic-coded focal characters were made salient through features of their own linguistic performance, puzzled responses from other characters, and sometimes narration. Ultimately, this served to underscore our focal characters’ social identities and essentialize their differences. We argue that these patterns influence how characters with neurodivergent traits are interpreted by side characters. In addition, the linguistic “othering” of characters on screen may reinforce the “otheringâ€_x009d_ of neurodivergent individuals in real life.
