‘Where are the words?’ Silence/d more-than-human readings in children with developmental language disorder (DLD)

2025/09/23 by Ana M Coves-Martínez, Alejandra Pacheco‐Costa, Fernando Guzmán‐Simón · 1 voice
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Early Childhood Education and Development #Language Development and Disorders #Reading and Literacy Development

paper · doi:10.1177/09075682251379607

openalex publication_date 2025/09/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11

Abstract

This paper addresses the ways in which children labelled with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) take part in a more-than-human reading event in the school. In this context, we approach what silence do from a neo-materialist lens that enables us to trouble deficit theories and school linguistic practices. We analyse our event, that involved a school group of 4-years old children, focusing on what silence, affect, DLD, sound and movement unleash as part of embodied discourses that flee stigmatisation of children diagnosed with DLD. Our research highlights how the friction of divergent approaches to dis/ableism facilitate the reconsideration of the nature of difference in early childhood.

Citations

• The impact of nonverbal ability on prevalence and clinical presentation of language disorder: evidence from a population study
• Phase 2 of CATALISE: a multinational and multidisciplinary Delphi consensus study of problems with language development: Terminology
• Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development.
• Opaque reciprocity: or theorising Glissant’s ‘right to opacity’ as a communication and language praxis in early childhood education

Discussions

• La publicación liderada por Ana M. Coves-Martínez, con Fernando Guzmán Simón, analiza la lectura con niños de 4 años con TDL desde el neo-materialismo. Este enfoque invita al profesorado a “leer” cuer [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]