2134/5438
Charles Antaki
Charles
Antaki
W.M.L. Finlay
W.M.L.
Finlay
Chris Walton
Chris
Walton
L. Pate
L.
Pate
Offering choices to people with intellectual disabilities: an interactional study
Loughborough University
2009
Intellectual disabilities
Choices
Interaction
Conversation analysis
Residential homes
Staff
Language, Communication and Culture not elsewhere classified
Studies in Human Society not elsewhere classified
Education
2009-11-03 13:58:41
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Offering_choices_to_people_with_intellectual_disabilities_an_interactional_study/9473159
At the level of policy recommendation, it is agreed that people with intellectual
impairments ought to be given opportunities to make choices in their lives; indeed, in the
UK, the Mental Capacity Act of 2005 enshrines such a right in law. However, at the
level of practice, there is a dearth of evidence as to how choices are actually offered in
everyday situations, which must hinder recommendations to change. This qualitative
interactional study, based on video recordings in British residential homes, combines
ethnography with the fine-grained methods of Conversation Analysis to identify some
conversational practices that staff use to offer choices to residents with intellectual
disabilities. We describe the unwanted consequences of some of these practices, and how
the institutional imperative to solicit clear and decisive choice may sometimes succeed
only in producing the opposite.