Representations of Dyslexia Across Genres in Children’s and Young Adult Literature
type: CreativeWork
description: Sitting at the intersection of disability studies, genre studies, and children’s and young adult (YA) literature scholarship, this doctoral thesis centres the representations of dyslexia and dyslexics across genres. Commonly defined within the medical model of disability as the struggle to read, write, spell, and acquire literacy skills, dyslexia is a learning disability which is estimated to affect up to 10% of the world’s population. While various studies have been conducted on dynamic and positive portrayals of dyslexic characters in children’s and YA fiction, few have examined how the Western culture of English literacy is disabling. Building on the work of Craig Collinson’s post-social model of dyslexia, ‘Lexism’ is a soft category—akin to those of racism or sexism—which examines how normative practices of literacy can discriminate or Other dyslexics. Within children’s and YA fiction, Lexism can be used as a theoretical lens to examine the representation of characters most Othered and disabled by normative literacy—dyslexics. Lexism’s dominance is further upheld and rarely troubled by the genre conventions which help construct these narratives and thus cultural understandings of dyslexia. This thesis argues that the genre conventions of the contemporary school story, detective fiction, and fantasy are commonly used as narrative tactics to reaffirm the social norms complicit in disabling dyslexics – reflecting pervasive deficit models of disability rather than troubling how normative literacy practices continue to Other dyslexics. This thesis is split into two parts: contemporary realism and fantasy. Part One examines the genre of the school story in Chapter One and the detective story (and the genre of mystery more broadly) in Chapter Two. I argue that the school story establishes what I call the ‘dyslexic diagnosis paradigm’ which inducts dyslexics and lexics alike into Lexism through institutional educational practice including that of a learning disability d…
abstract: Sitting at the intersection of disability studies, genre studies, and children’s and young adult (YA) literature scholarship, this doctoral thesis centres the representations of dyslexia and dyslexics across genres. Commonly defined within the medical model of disability as the struggle to read, write, spell, and acquire literacy skills, dyslexia is a learning disability which is estimated to affect up to 10% of the world’s population. While various studies have been conducted on dynamic and positive portrayals of dyslexic characters in children’s and YA fiction, few have examined how the Western culture of English literacy is disabling. Building on the work of Craig Collinson’s post-social model of dyslexia, ‘Lexism’ is a soft category—akin to those of racism or sexism—which examines how normative practices of literacy can discriminate or Other dyslexics. Within children’s and YA fiction, Lexism can be used as a theoretical lens to examine the representation of characters most Othered and disabled by normative literacy—dyslexics. Lexism’s dominance is further upheld and rarely troubled by the genre conventions which help construct these narratives and thus cultural understandings of dyslexia. This thesis argues that the genre conventions of the contemporary school story, detective fiction, and fantasy are commonly used as narrative tactics to reaffirm the social norms complicit in disabling dyslexics – reflecting pervasive deficit models of disability rather than troubling how normative literacy practices continue to Other dyslexics. This thesis is split into two parts: contemporary realism and fantasy. Part One examines the genre of the school story in Chapter One and the detective story (and the genre of mystery more broadly) in Chapter Two. I argue that the school story establishes what I call the ‘dyslexic diagnosis paradigm’ which inducts dyslexics and lexics alike into Lexism through institutional educational practice including that of a learning disability d…
author: Leung, Elizabeth
language: eng
keywords: Children's Literature, Young Adult Literature, Dyslexia, Neurodiversity, Disability Studies, Learning Disabilities, Genre, Contemporary Realism, Mystery/Detective, Fantasy
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/94745d14-2d8b-4e70-9f12-69bc356bcd7f/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2024-05-16
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:17Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.114038