The gendered framing of language impairments in criminalised young people

Abstract

Young people whose language performance does not meet socially expected standards are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Pragmatic language skills encompass the social aspects of language, which include constructing narratives, the rules of conversations, turn-taking, topic management, and non-verbal communication. Current research on pragmatic language impairments in criminalised young people – that is, on their symptomatic difficulties with social communication and language – remains inconclusive. The purpose of this study is to uncover the perceptions and framing of pragmatic language impairments in a sample of studies involving boys and girls from Australia and the United States. Drawing on content analysis of a sample of pertinent research, we expose the deeply gendered framing of pragmatic language performance and associated behaviours of criminalised young people. We demonstrate that available studies often represent female participants’ problematised use of pragmatic language as a personal choice, thus locating the problem within the individual and responsibilising girls and young women. However, for male participants, current research often presents problematised use of pragmatic language as a consequence of institutional failures. We argue that this gendered framing has political implications for criminalised young people and future research.