On Controversy and Community

I said something in the Comments section of one of my earlier posts about GLP and Linguistics, referring to my opinion that the authors of a particular paper have made bad faith arguments.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and here are some of my thoughts:

---

Bad Faith - A Definition

Let's look at a couple of definitions:

1. Intentional deception or dishonesty; or intentional failure to meet an obligation.

2. A person’s intent to defraud or deceive himself or another person.

(These are from legaldictionary.net)

A bad faith argument is a position that can be factually disproved, yet its proponent continues to adhere to it. If the individual knows they are being dishonest or unfair with their position, it’s a bad faith argument.

(From grammarly.com)

After looking at these definitions, I genuinely regret my earlier choice of words. I do not know that Bryant et al are being intentionally deceptive or dishonest. I apologize for this implication of my statement and take full responsibility for mis-speaking. When I used the term "bad faith" I was not thinking of that particular aspect of its meaning, but in the end intent doesn't excuse impact.

I do, however, believe that some of Bryant et al's arguments demonstrate a very limited attempt to understand and listen to the community directly and personally impacted by their arguments -- the autistic community. Their perspective may be that their efforts were genuine and sufficient. But significant portions of the autistic community disagree.

---

When Good Intentions Weren't Enough

Let's look at an example of a well-respected scientist and his well-intentioned yet ultimately not-wholly-positive impact on the community he was trying to help -- Alexander Graham Bell.

Image Description: an old-fashioned black and white illustration of Alexander Graham Bell

Most people know about his role in the invention of the telephone, but many don't know about his involvement with the Deaf community, which began early in his life:

Bell was also deeply affected by his mother's gradual deafness (she began to lose her hearing when he was 12), and learned a manual finger language so he could sit at her side and tap out silently the conversations swirling around the family parlour.[23] He also developed a technique of speaking in clear, modulated tones directly into his mother's forehead, whereby she would hear him with reasonable clarity.[24] Bell's preoccupation with his mother's deafness led him to study acoustics.

(Alexander Graham Bell - Wikipedia)

He worked very hard for much of his life to improve the lives (from his perspective) of deaf people:

Throughout his life, Bell sought to assimilate the deaf and hard of hearing with the hearing world. He encouraged speech therapy and lip-reading over sign language. He outlined this in an 1898 paper[67] detailing his belief that, with resources and effort, the deaf could be taught to read lips and speak (known as oralism),[68] enabling their integration with wider society.[69]

(Alexander Graham Bell - Wikipedia)

However, many of the people he was aiming to help disagreed vehemently with his actions:

By the early twentieth century, oral methods dominated deaf education in the United States. It was a remarkable transformation, since oralism was not seriously considered in the mid-nineteenth century. Bell’s success in promoting oralism has generated much hostility from the signing deaf community for its deleterious impact on their culture that continues today.

(disability history museum--Education: Essay: Disability History Museum)

The debate between oralism and bimodal bilingualism (i.e. deaf children learning -- from birth -- both a full signed language like American Sign Language as well as a spoken language) for deaf students continues to this day, tragically resulting in language deprivation for many deaf children.

While Alexander Graham Bell might not have been acting in bad faith when he suppressed sign language, he certainly wasn't operating with the cooperation of the community he was trying to help. As a result, large portions of said community have never fully trusted his (or many related) recommendations when it comes to their well-being.

---

When Good Intentions Aren't Enough

There are some strands of the current story -- about Gestalt Language processing and the autistic community -- that run parallel with the story of oralism and the Deaf community.

We can assume genuine good intentions from Bryant et al, who appear to be concerned about the possible negative impacts on autistic individuals of a treatment methodology that doesn't meet their scientific standards. Just like we can assume genuine good intentions from Alexander Graham Bell when he expressed concerns about sign language and its potential negative impacts on the deaf people he wanted to help.

But just as Alexander Graham Bell didn't accept what countless Deaf people said about the value of sign language, Bryant et al admit to not including autistic voices when they addressed Gestalt Language Processing:

While the team included two parents of autistic adults, none of the research team identified as an autistic or neurodivergent researcher, and this is recognised as a limitation.

(p. 8)

They recognize this as a limitation, but not enough of a limitation to prevent them from making the following accusation:

It is unknown why numerous presumably evidence-based professionals have apparently eschewed any need for justification of a proposed treatment, prior to its implementation on a large scale; in the manner of a 'one size fits all' approach, meanwhile dehumanizing children by classifying and referring reductively to them as either 'GLPs' or 'analytic processors' ('ALPs').

(p. 8)

The above quote seems to pretty clearly imply that the authors believe that describing a person as a "gestalt language processor" is dehumanizing and reductive. This may seem on the surface like a defense of autistic people. Yet you don't have to spend much time at all searching the online autistic community to find plenty of examples of autistic people positively identifying themselves and other autistic folks as "GLPs" and embracing gestalt language processing (or echolalia, or scripting) as an important aspect of their identity.

That leaves us with a question: Are Bryant et al simply unaware of a significant portion of the autistic community embracing GLP as a part of their identity, or are they aware of its acceptance but think they know better than the people personally affected?

Alternatively, Bryant et al may be aware of numerous autistic people embracing their identity as GLPs, but they may believe those individuals comprise a "small but vocal" minority of the community. Or they may not believe that those who embrace their identity as GLPs truly speak for the broader autistic community.

Alexander Graham Bell might have been aware of many Deaf people's critiques of his promotion of oralism at the expense of sign language, and he might have thought they were only a minority of the Deaf population. He might have thought that those Deaf people didn't truly speak for the Deaf community as a whole. His good intentions, combined with his perspective on the Deaf community, still led to widespread national education policies that resulted in language deprivation for countless deaf children.

---

Image Description: A partial screenshot of a Facebook post by Cass Griffin Bennett, stating "If I could give one piece of advice to SLPs as an autistic mom of autistic kids, it's that speech therapists must actually be in community with the population(s) you serve. Doing so will ensure you stay curious and never stop learning."

I want to include the incredible Cass Griffin Bennett's words here, because I think they bring home an important point that I think I was attempting to make when I previously mis-used the term "bad faith argument."

When it comes to the GLP discussion, there are many people -- myself included -- that believe a good faith effort to critique it requires at minimum an attempt to learn from the autistic community, in all its range and complexity, about how the concept of gestalt language processing is viewed there.

I believe it's the responsibility of academics and professionals in a position of power and influence to do the hard work to build trust with the community they study if they truly want to advocate alongside them as allies. Otherwise, they risk their actions being perceived as paternalism instead of allyship.