38th Annual Student Research Conference
The Effect of Neurodivergence on Speakers' Pragmatic Understanding
Allison L. Flerlage
Dr. Darrin Hetrick and Dr. Douglas Ball, Faculty Mentors
The Gricean Maxims are a set of pragmatic expectations that speakers generally have for communication. Neurodivergent individuals are typically assumed to break the maxims more than neurotypical individuals due to a perceived deficit in pragmatic skills. However, many neurodivergent individuals have reported that the opposite seems true. This has led to the hypothesis that both neurodivergent and neurotypical individuals follow the maxims to the best of their ability, but the perception of the maxims differs between the two groups. To test this, this study examined a sample of Truman students’ understanding of the Gricean Maxim of quality (the expectation for honesty). Participants were asked to read a short story and then rate how natural one character's utterance was in that context. Neurodivergent participants’ answers were then compared to neurotypical participants’ answers. The data was analyzed for both differences between the groups and internal group consistency.
Keywords: neurodivergence, pragmatics, Gricean Maxims, linguistics
Topic(s):Linguistics
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Session: 305-2
Location: SUB Georgian B
Time: 1:15