ABSTRACT

Back to our research question, posed in Chapter 5 by the author of Gerry O’Toole’s story: What can one story tell us about the social and cultural worlds inhabited by people with learning difficulties? Discourse analysis allows us to answer this question by examining the ways in which Gerry and others are moulded by the power of discourses. Following Wilkinson and Kitzinger (1995, p. 3), analysis aims to explore what it means to be a person with learning difficulties in this post/modern tale, by interrogating those discursive practices which constitute versions of self. While Gerry has told his story, this is the analyst’s supplementary story. Three discourse analyses are offered.