Prof. Kira Hall awarded Wenner-Gren Foundation grant!
Prof. Kira Hall has received a research grant from the , a major international foundation for anthropological research, for her project 鈥淎ccent Imitation on the Autism Spectrum.鈥 The project investigates a phenomenon noted in descriptions of autistic symptoms but rarely discussed in scholarship: the prolonged and often fluent adoption of non-local or 鈥渇oreign鈥 dialect features.听Drawing from ethnographic interviews with speakers on the autism spectrum who characterize themselves as having an accent, her study examines how autistic individuals understand, navigate, and cultivate their own atypical language practices.听More specifically, it听hypothesizes that the adoption of non-local accents may be understood as socially strategic imitation,听whereby autistic individuals draw from non-local spacetimes and associated language ideologies to听access forms of intimacy and social meaning unavailable to them due to their communicative听differences. She will be working on the project with 黑料社区网 PhD student Ayden Parish, whose dissertation also focuses on questions related to language and neurodiversity.
Congratulations, Kira!