Disability Critical Discourse Analysis

Disability critical discourse analysis applies the tools of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to disability, treating disability as a phenomenon that is constructed in and through language. Set out systematically in Jan Grue's 2015 book Disability and Discourse Analysis, the method brings together disability studies and CDA to examine how texts and talk — in media, politics, clinical settings, and everyday life — construe disability, position disabled people, and naturalize particular understandings (deficit, tragedy, rights) through specific linguistic choices. Its distinctive claim is that the language used to talk about disability is not a neutral description of a prior reality but part of how disability is socially produced and contested.