Abstract

The aim of this book is to redefine dyslexia within the field of sociology. In order to establish a sociological understanding of dyslexia the study has turned to the existing social literature within disability studies. Over the past thirty years, disability studies have represented the voices of disabled people within academia and grassroots politics (Barnes 2003). However, the origins of disability studies were in representing individuals with physical disabilities (Shakespeare 2006). This could explain why certain specific learning disabilities have gone unnoticed within the disability movement. To date, only a small number of articles investigating issues of dyslexia have acknowledged social model politics within their research (Riddick 2001; Mortimore and Dupree 2008). Owing to the gap within the sociological literature, the aim of this book is to explore dyslexia using biographical research methods in order to represent these unheard voices. The study will develop an analysis that looks further than those educational and psycho-medical scholars who have claimed ‘ownership’ of defining this particular impairment. This book plans to locate dyslexia within a social context by developing a disability-rights-based approach (Oliver 1996; Finkelstein 2001; Barnes 2003). However, the author will use the work of alternative disability theorists such as Crow (1996), Watson (2002) and Shakespeare (2006) in order to go beyond the medical and social model dichotomy to develop a grounded social theory of dyslexia.