Research interests

Metaphors of chronic conditions and disability

This project focuses on Lakoff and Johnson's Conceptual Metaphor Theory and metaphors of chronic conditions. This study examines interview data from young women with chronic conditions to examine metaphor use; participants use more common “journey” metaphors in medical contexts, but in daily life use the under researched “cycle” conceptual metaphor. While this metaphor is not new, research into it is novel, especially its use as a metaphor for chronic conditions and disability. This research can be expanded in multiple directions, especially into writing in digital spaces to continue to examine how diverse groups of people with disabilities utilize and understand this conceptual metaphor. 

 

Disability and chronic illness identity

Although chronic illness is often left out of disability studies, there exists a growing consensus on the benefit of including these groups within the disability coalition. Not only can those with chronic illness benefit from the accommodations associated with disability, but disability as a whole community can better advocate with the views of those with chronic illnesses in mind. However, because of the long-held separation of the two, people with chronic illness often do not consider themselves disabled. To investigate the current state of disability identity in young people with chronic illness, this study takes a Conversation Analytic (CA) approach to disability identity in chronic illness, analyzing the interviews of 10 young adult participants with chronic illness. While a variety of approaches to disability identity exist in the literature, a linguistic approach such as (CA) brings a social scientific model into play which is often lacking in other areas of disability studies, even those that suggest the inclusion of chronic illness. The study closely analyzes respondents’ answers to two questions: “Do you consider your health condition a disability?” and “Do you consider yourself disabled?” After examining the preferred and dispreferred responses of all participants, the transcripts of three exemplar participants were closely analyzed. This study found a fluctuating, context-bound identification with disability for young people with chronic illnesses; a majority answering “sometimes” or couching and hedging yes and no responses. Additionally, medicalized discussion of health and disability were prominent, with discussions of diagnosis being tied to disability identity.

 

Disability on Twitter

My project Autistic Metis Rhetoric on Twitter, which I have presented at a variety of national conferences and is published with the new online journal Including Disability.

In this paper, I examine the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag in 2020 and 2021, in response to the release of Sia’s film trailer (and later film) Music. This hashtag activism shows how disabled people, and in particular autistic people, use métis on Twitter to pushback against institutionalized ableism and anti-autistic rhetoric. This paper is significant because it goes beyond studies of access to examine what happens when disabled people are given space and agency. As M. Remi Yergeau said in their book Authoring Autism, rhetoric as a whole has “dehumanized the autistic” to a place that “even autistic people have difficulty thinking of themselves as …rhetorical” (p. 38-9). Rather than continue to prove this ableist idea, this research seeks to demonstrate the importance and power of autistic rhetorics, in this case métis disabled rhetorics that change what it means to be rhetorical.

Although Twitter as it existed in 2020 is no more, with many leaving the platform after its purchase by Musk, other social media and digital spaces are rife with potential for future research. I have already begun examining Instagram as a site of digital and visual rhetoric, as well as exploring new social media sites that may develop into the “next” Twitter, like Threads, BlueSky, and more.

 

Digital humanities

To supplement my Twitter-based study of autistic responses to Sia’s film “Music” I created a digital supplement using digital humanities tools such as the Gale Scholar Lab to analyze popular website articles about the film in order to track how public sentiment changed over time. This type of digital humanities research allows me to validate my own scholarship, and adding to my ultimate findings that online activism can be successful, such as the case I examine in my article (forthcoming in Including Disability), such as in this case. 

 

Images of chronic pain

This project brings together personal experiences of chronic pain with a variety of scholarship on chronic pain and one’s (in)ability to communicate about pain (Scarry, 1985). Although some argue that chronic pain can be narrated, others argue that it cannot be due to its cyclical nature with no beginning or end, or what Frank (1995) calls a “chaos narrative.” Nevertheless, these so-called ‘broken’ narratives are not necessarily bad, although they do not fit within traditional western narrative arcs. 

Furthermore, online communities of disabled people, people with chronic illnesses, and people with chronic pain have come to use images and memes as a tool for storytelling, demonstrating the ways in which an image really is “worth 1,000 words,” doing the work that textual narratives alone cannot do to tell stories of pain.

 

Future research

In the next 3-5 years I plan to expand my metaphor research, particularly looking at a wider cross section of people with chronic conditions to find out more about the use of the “cycle” conceptual metaphor, as well as further research into “movement” metaphors within “journey” and “cycle” conceptual metaphors to talk about chronic conditions. The next paper in my metaphor research follows up with my initial participants for member checking, as well as to find out what people with chronic conditions think about the “cycle” metaphor and how well it fits their experience with chronic illness and chronic pain.

 

I would also like to expand my work on social media  to examine autistic rhetoric and disability rhetoric on other social media sites such as Tiktok and Tumblr, as well as to work on a monograph about the role of social media in the rise of newly diagnosed autistic adults, especially among AFAB and autistics of color.