Understanding Others in a Neurodiverse World - by Gemma Williams (Paperback)

About the Book

"Autistic people often experience difficulties with social communication. This can impact all areas of life and can contribute to poorer mental health outcomes, reduced opportunities for fulfilling social interactions and barriers to health and social care, education and employment. This book offers a new way of understanding why cross-neurotype mis-attunements in communication may happen by taking the double empathy problem--the reframing of social communication difficulties as a two-way problem, not simply the result of an autistic 'deficit'--and a little-known cognitive linguistics theory, 'relevance theory', as a starting point. Weaving together threads from critical autism studies, a social-justice perspective, cognitive science, linguistics and sociology, this book leads the reader towards a new, radical perspective of how we can understand these breakdowns in understanding" -- Publishers website

Book Synopsis

Autistic people often experience difficulties with social communication. This can impact all areas of life and can contribute to poorer mental health outcomes, reduced opportunities for fulfilling social interactions and barriers to health and social care, education and employment. This book offers a new way of understanding why cross-neurotype mis attunements in communication may happen by taking the double empathy problem - the reframing of social communication difficulties as a two-way problem, not simply the result of an autistic ' deficit' - and a little-known cognitive linguistics theory, ' relevance theory', as a starting point. Weaving together threads from critical autism studies, a social-justice perspective, cognitive science, linguistics and sociology, this book leads the reader towards a new, radical perspective of how we can understand these breakdowns in understanding.

About the Author

Gemma Williams is an autistic autism researcher, musician and ex-beekeeper, living in Sussex. She currently works as a Research Officer on the Wellcome Trust-funded ' Autism: from menstruation to menopause' project, for Swansea University. Gemma is a linguist by heart, but following her ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Brighton in Social Policy, her research interests have extended to more social justice-related issues, including: autistic people's experiences of loneliness, barriers to healthcare for neurodivergent people, sensory environments of public spaces and, most recent