A Psycholinguistic study on Expressive language disorder of the Autistic characters in Miracle Run movie

ABSTRACT

Recently, it has been reported that the prevalence of autism increases significantly. Obviously, one of the characteristics of autism is language problem or it is well-known linguistically as language disorder. This case can be detected easily by identifying several difficulties of the autistic sufferers when they are producing some utterances or it is famous as an expressive language disorder of autism. This phenomenon is really fascinating to be observed because the language disorder of autism has been regarded as the best predictor for their future development (Rutter, Greenfield, &Lockyer, 1967, in Carroll, 1985).

Based on the reason above, this study is conducted to analyze the expressive language disorder of autism represented in Miracle Run movie to find the kinds of it and get description of the contexts affecting the autistic characters produce those utterances.

Dealing with the research problems mentioned above, this study applies descriptive qualitative approach to get the descriptive result by analyzing this phenomenon using the Carroll’s theory (1985). In getting the credible data of this study, the writer applies data source triangulation in which comparing, completing and rechecking the data in the movie with the given text from the internet and also from another researcher to ensure the trustworthiness of the data.

As the result of the analysis, Philip and Steven as the autistic characters face all kinds of expressive language disorder covering phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics in various cases. They face phonological language disorder in the case of inappropriate stress, flat and singsong intonation, and expressionless speech. They also face syntactical language disorder in the case of echolalia, and semantic language disorder involving their disability in using semantic bias. In addition, they have pragmatic language disorder in the case of less complex gestures, politeness strategy, spontaneous remarks, misuse pronoun, limited repertoire devices to initiate a topic in a conversation, and tendency to use a question to gain respond from listener. Besides, these all kinds of expressive language disorder in autism do not stand by themselves. Each of them is always accompanied by another or even others in one utterance produced by the autistic characters. Concerning the context when the autistic characters produce their expressive language disorder both in each kind and mixing cases, there are six types of the context affecting their utterances. The autistic characters produce their expressive language disorder when they are posing a question to someone, answering or responding a question of other, expressing their ambition, expectation, surprise, and something they dislike.

As a final point of this study, because the result shows that the autistic characters mostly suffer pragmatic language disorder, it suggests that all people have good understanding and tolerance when they have social interaction with them.