Communicating with Types of Disability: Communicative Competence and Patronizing Speech

Abstract

Objectives. Study 1 was to explore the relationship between types of disability and their associated stereotyped

expectations of communicative competence. Study 2 was to determine whether changes in stereotypical communicative

competence towards persons with disabilities would affect the perception of level of patronizing speech they received by a

third party. Methods. In Study 1, a survey recruited sixty-two people at the campus of City University of Hong Kong to rate the

communicative competence of nine types of disability varied with cognitive orientation, visibility and context-specificity. In

Study 2, forty students of City University were assigned into the two experimental conditions (Public Relations vs.

Computer Science) to evaluate the level of patronizing speech received by an interactant with disability. The patronizing

speech was implemented in a conversational audiotape. Results. Study 1 revealed that Schizophrenia was rated as less communicatively competent than Dyslexia, and Dyslexia

less competent than Muscular Dystrophy, in terms of the cognitive orientation. In the dimensions of the visibility,

Monoplegia and Amputation were rated as more competent than Quadriplegia. Epilepsy was rated as less competence

than Cancer and Exercise-induced Asthma in terms of the visibility. Study 2 showed that the interactant with disability and

with a context conveying his communicative competence as positive would be perceived as receiving less patronizing

speech than with a context conveying his competence as negative. Discussion. Study 1 suggested that people without disability held heterogeneous and hierarchical stereotype towards the

communicative competence of persons with different disabilities. Study 2 indicated that people without disability could

perceive accommodations of external interability communications towards their own stereotypical expectations of

communicative competence of those interactants and it might possible to change stereotypes towards people with

disabilities with additional contexts.