The autistic spectrum in literature

In this week's guest entry, Bettina Burger takes a look at how people on the autistic spectrum are portrayed in literature:

Characters on the autistic spectrum are becoming more and more popular in TV shows and novels. Autism is a condition which is marked by a so-called triad of impairments: impairment of social relationships, impairment of social communication and impairment of social imagination (cf. Aarons 1992: 5). It is important to note that autism exists “on a continuum from the severely impaired at the lower end into the normal range of human variation at the upper” (Bottomer 2007: 26) with Asperger’s syndrome at the upper end of the spectrum. Non-neurotypical characters on the spectrum can provide an unusual point of view to readers and viewers, who might hope to gain an insight into a mind foreign to their own. However, as with all fiction, their characteristics are often adapted in order to be more appealing. For example, characters on the autistic spectrum are often portrayed as socially awkward, but in some way attractive to the audience. The most widely used element of this literary trope is certainly the autistic savant – usually a highly intelligent loner who does not cope well in social situations. Perhaps the most famous example of this kind of autistic or pseudo-autistic character is Sherlock Holmes from BBC’s widely acclaimed Sherlock. In the show itself, his autistic traits are acknowledged when Inspector Lestrade says that Sherlock “likes having the same faces back together. It appeals to his... his...” and John responds with the suggestion “Asperger’s?” (Dir. Paul McGuigan, The Hounds of Baskerville). Sherlock does exhibit certain aspects of the autistic spectrum such as a lack of social skills and an occasional failure to comprehend sarcasm. Most of the linguistic aspects of the autistic spectrum, however, are left out, and thus, Sherlock’s diagnosis – always problematic with fictional characters – is certainly not straightforward.

     Let us now look closer at some of the linguistic features that characterise autistic people and how these are portrayed in popular literature. In this case, I am going to focus on Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), Jodi Picoult’s House Rules (2010) and Siobhan Dowd’s London Eye Mystery (2010). Of course, it has to be said that none of these novels depict every possible particularity of autistic speech, which is just as well: not every individual on the autistic spectrum displays every single language particularity that can be part of an autistic speech pattern (Büttner 1995: 40). Most language particularities can be classified as belonging to the categories of formulaic speech, so-called ‘irrelevant’ language, and certain deficiencies in the pragmatic use of language. Since formulaic speech tends to be the most widely depicted feature of autistic speech in literature, I am going to focus on this aspect.

Formulaic Speech is a description used for several aspects of autistic language, such as a tendency towards repetition and echolalia, problems with deictic terms and extremely literal language use (cf. Walenski 2006: 183). Echolalia is the exact repetition of other people’s words or sentences, which can be relevant and thus used for communication (cf. Weber 1980: 24), even though it is difficult to interpret. There is immediate echolalia, which means that words are repeated immediately, as well as delayed echolalia, which can happen days or even weeks after the words are first heard by the autistic person (cf. Büttner 1995: 41). Echolalia is often most prominent in moments of distress, so it could be concluded that echolalia is used by autistic people to structure their world and make it more predictable (cf. Büttner 1995: 47), thus adhering to their need for structure and repetition.

Interestingly, echolalia seems to be the most frequently used device to denote autism in the three novels, albeit to different degrees. Christopher, Haddon’s main character, shows mostly subject echolalia by frequently talking about science and mathematics. There is very little linguistic echolalia present in the novel, which can probably be explained by the main character’s relative proficiency in language use. The only incident of delayed echolalia is when Christopher tells his age, once after he is asked by a policeman (cf. Haddon 2003: 7) and once when he tries to chat with one of his neighbours using almost the same words and degree of information “My age is 15 years and 3 months and 3 days” (Haddon 2003: 51). Picoult’s protagonist, Jacob, uses delayed echolalia much more frequently, especially “when he cannot find the words for how he feels [and] borrows someone else’s” (Picoult 2010: 6). When in jail, he says “Kid, the next time I say ‘Let’s go someplace like Bolivia’” (Picoult 2010: 269), which refers to a film called Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who, instead of going to prison, jumped off a cliff. When asked why “he’d done it”, he answers with a quote from Love Story, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” (Picoult 2010: 388). All instances of delayed echolalia consist of movie quotes and can be interpreted as being relevant to the actual situation and thus a valid attempt to communicate. Dowd’s Ted also shows several instances of echolalia. He repeats his mother’s “Off the rails” shortly after she complained that Ted’s sister is “going off the rails” (Dowd 2010: 8). When his sister suggests that they should be lying to their parents, Ted says “’Lie,’ I repeated.” (Dowd 2010: 60) His echolalia here could be caused by the fact that he is distressed about lying as he is usually unable to do so.

Another frequent characteristic of autistic formulaic speech is the literal understanding of language (cf. Weber 1980: 87), since most autistic people seem to be unable to understand metaphors, idioms, lies or jokes. There seems to be strong evidence that autistic people struggle with using those strategies of non-literal language as well as with understanding them. Honesty is one of the most prominent features of people with autistic spectrum disorders, which might make their language seem inappropriate (Büttner 1995: 106), as they can only rarely resort to diplomacy or white lies.

This element of autistic speech comes up in all three novels since each protagonist has difficulty understanding metaphors and similes. Christopher, for example, states that he cannot tell jokes because he does not understand them (Haddon 2003: 10) as they sometimes depend on making one word “mean three different things at the same time” (Haddon 2003: 10), which is very hard for him to grasp. Just like Christopher, Jacob also understands most utterances literally. His first scene shows him after having arranged a crime scene for his mother to solve. The murder case he invented involved him being beaten to death by a clock – a result of Jacob’s misunderstanding of the word “clocked” (Picoult 2010: 5), which he heard on his favourite television series, CrimeBusters, and which actually means ‘to be punched by someone’. Ted also has problems with metaphors and even similes. Whereas his sister Kat says that London looks like a toy town, he thinks “London looks like London” (Dowd 2010: 1). Nor does he understand when his mother says that his sister is “off the rails” (Dowd 2010: 9) to indicate that Kat is not behaving as she should, and is “thinking of train accidents” (Dowd 2010: 9) at first because that is what he connects in his literal understanding with the expression “off the rails”. As already mentioned, he is also usually incapable of lying.

Of course, other elements of autistic language, such as irregularities with loudness and intonation and certain pragmatic difficulties, can be found in literary depictions of autistic characters as well. Perhaps the most interesting peculiarity is the so-called ‘irrelevant language’. This contains highly symbolic and metaphorical language (cf. Brown 2010: 28) and has to do with ‘associational’ thinking common to people with autistic spectrum disorders (Brown 2010: 28). It might be surprising that people on the autistic spectrum can and do employ metaphors in their own speech even though they have such difficulty understanding them from others. However, their metaphors are highly personal and unconnected to social conventions, which can make them hard to interpret (Büttner 1995: 90). Interpretation, however, is possible and often rewarding. Consequently, there are several writers on the spectrum who produce remarkable poetry, such as Emily Dickinson, who is thought to have been affected by Asperger’s Syndrome (Brown 2010: 30). I can only encourage you to keep reading books about and by individuals on the autistic spectrum, since they are deeply rewarding both on a linguistic and a literary level.

Bibliography

• Aarons, Maureen; Gittens, Tessa. The Handbook of Autism. 2^nd Edition. A guide for parents and professionals. London: Routledge, 1992.
• Bottomer, Phyllis Ferguson. So Odd a Mixture. Along the Autistic Spectrum in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007.

• Brown, Julie. Writers on the Spectrum. How Autism and Asperger Syndrome have Influenced Literary Writing. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2010.
• Büttner, Claudia. Kölner Linguistische Arbeiten – Germanistik. Autistische Sprachstörungen. Hürth: Gabel Verlag, 1995.
• Dowd, Siobhan. The London Eye Mystery. Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2010.
• Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog during the Night-Time. London: Vintage, 2003.
• Sherlock 2.2. The Hounds of Baskerville. Dir. Paul McGuigan. Perf. Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman. 2010. DVD. BBC, 2011.
• Picoult, Jodi. House Rules. New York: Atria International, 2010.
• Rees, Norma S. „Aspects of Deixis in the Language of Children with Autism and Related Childhood Psychoses.” Language and Cognition. Essays in Honor of Arhur J. Bronstein. Ed. Lawrence J. and Carolyn B Raphael; Miriam R. Valdovinos. New York: Plenum Press, 1984.
• Walenski, Matthew; Tager-Flusberg, Helen: Ullman, Michael T. „Language in Autism.“ Understanding Autism: From Basic Neuroscience to Treatment. Ed. Steven O. Moldin, John L.R. Rubenstein. Boca Raton: Taylor and Francis Group, 2006. 175 – 203.
• Weber, Stefan. Aspects of the Language of Autistic Children: a study in linguistic pragmatics. Zürich: Zug und Zürich, 1980.