Communicative Intent of Spoken Discourse by Using Social Stories among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

It is prevailing that ASD children often seem to have difficulty with social, cognitive and language processes. In this study, the communicative intent of the spoken discourse is examined by using social stories through the identification of the elements of discourse in utterances among ASD children. The current study uses qualitative data to provide details to the research objective, and a case study method design is utilised for the collection and analysis of the data. There are 13 ASD children selected as the sample for the study with four female and nine male children. As for the instruments, the study utilises social stories and semi-structured interview questions. There are three different social stories (Visiting atuk and nenek in Kampung, Being Kind to Animals and Helping My Family) narrated to the respondents. Nevertheless, to explain more about this phenomenon, the current research employs a theory; Discourse Analysis Theory (Normaliza Abd Rahim, 2019). The findings of the study reveal that the 13 respondents display seven communicative intent signals and their spoken utterances subscribe to the three elements (content, context and assumption) mentioned in the discourse theory. The aspects, in theory, have helped the ASD respondents to be able to understand the content and context of the social stories. There is no magic formula for teaching special educational needs students, especially autism.