Rasmussen, G. (2013). That’s my story! Resisting disabling processes in a therapeutic activity. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v4i2.273
This study examined the processes of disablement and resistance to disablement in the interactions between a speech-language pathologist (SLP) and a 6-year-old boy with specific language impairment who relies on gestures and signs to communicate. The institutional and sequentially organized categories of the SLP as the ‘questioner’ and the boy as the ‘answerer’ were established by their combined actions. The categories of ‘teacher’ and ‘learner’ were established by the SLP’s use of known-answer questions and evaluative responses, as well as the boy’s alignment with those actions. The activity itself was disabling because it required the boy to tell a story using signs that were treated as supplementary to the speech and language used by the SLP. The SLP’s sense making processes were disabling because she relied on an absent third party (i.e., letter from home) as the source of repair, which withdrew the right of repair and story authorship from the boy, in addition to treating the boy’s narrative as subordinate to written narrative. The boy redistributed the resources and organization of the activity by co-opting the SLP’s resources (i.e., the letter, language in the letter, gaze, and signs) for his own use (i.e., taking the letter in his hands though unable to use speech or read) in order to change social categories of the knower/listener, as well as take control of story authorship.