‘Just Like Normal People’. Social Representations and the Ideology of Ability in Everyday Discourse

Abstract

This research critically examined whether ideological ableism influences understandings of disability among non-disabled individuals, employing synthesised theories of Social Representations and Ideology of Ability. A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, further informed by Social Representations Theory, was conducted on episodic interview data from nine participants in the UK. Findings consistently indicated that ideological ableism underpinned participants' understandings. Disabled individuals were significantly othered through subject positioning and regimes of ‘truth’ framing disability as tragic, burdensome or deficient. Social representations predominantly anchored disability to visible markers such as the wheelchair, reductively objectifying the concept. Participants also reinforced neoliberal hierarchies that valued productivity, independence and aesthetic capability as essential to human worth, while positioning disability as contrary to these ideals. However, cognitive polyphasia was also identified as participants expressed dissonance between progressive ideals and internalised ableism. Discursive strategies, including aversive ableism, hedging and rhetorical consensus, legitimised participants' use of corporeal hierarchies that privileged the ‘ideal-type’ able body, while simultaneously evidencing their considerable discomfort in discussing this issue.