Ways of being in home and community: Language socialization of children with autism in multilingual South Asian immigrant families

Children with autism are known to have severe atypical language use and communication impairments. It is also assumed that they are unable to appropriately participate in everyday family and social life activities. This dissertation examines the language socialization of three multilingual South Asian immigrant families who have young sons with autism. Data are drawn from 17 months of audio and video-recorded observations of family interactions at home and in the community, supplemented by audio-recorded interviews.; My analyses commenced with an understanding of how parents made meaning of having a child with autism, and examined parents' beliefs, goals, and expectations about how to raise and communicate with their child. Findings illuminate that families understood the child rearing task in explicitly religious terms. Parents perceived their children as children of God to be included in every aspect of life, raising their children as normally as possible, exposing and incorporating them into all the ordinary practices at home and in the community. Parents strongly contested experts' understanding of autism. The study documents the rich and complex communicative environment in which these children lived. Religious communication was a large part of the communicative environment. Repeating and recollecting, the two main phases of the indigenous learning process for learning and teaching the verses of the Qur'an, were strongly associated to the child's communicative progress, in addition to the enormous amount of verbal stimulation across multiple languages that these children received on a regular basis. This dissertation shows that these children functioned remarkably well within home environments that did not afford the predictability and simplicity that is recommended for children with autism. Two of the children went from being non-verbal/semi-verbal to fluent speakers by the end of the study.; One major implication is that experts on autism and linguistically and culturally different families must collaborate to uncover and translate effective practices, including practices for families and teachers to follow. Findings from this study also lay the foundation in the area of language development programs for children with communication disabilities that are based on the family's cultural background and care-giving styles.