?Did you solve it yourself??: Evaluation of self narratives of discrimination by people with ?learning difficulties?

Abstract

Narratives about personal experience are shaped by the interactional context, and people are required to tell their own stories in a variety of social contexts. For people with 'learning difficulties', veracity is a particular and paradoxical problem. New policies and strategies require them to take part in public debates, while they are traditionally judged to be incompetent to be witnesses to the 'truth'. Presenting data from an inclusive research project, this paper analyses some of the micro strategies by which people with 'learning difficulties' create their own research interviews by asking questions, telling stories and evaluating their own narratives about discrimination. The interplay of different levels of identity in the data and the concept of interactional rights were found to be useful analytical tools. By doing research and speaking up for themselves, people with 'learning difficulties' can collaborate to take on new situational identities; in this context, this paper shows precisely how they evaluate their own narratives to focus on various aspects of their own more permanent identity. Practical conclusions are drawn, both for people with 'learning difficulties' and for their interlocutors, challenging assumptions of blanket incompetence.