‘Where are the words?’ Silence/d more-than-human readings in children with developmental language disorder (DLD)

This paper addresses the ways in which children labelled with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) take part in a more-than-human reading event in the school. In this context, we approach what silence do from a neo-materialist lens that enables us to trouble deficit theories and school linguistic practices. We analyse our event, that involved a school group of 4-years old children, focusing on what silence, affect, DLD, sound and movement unleash as part of embodied discourses that flee stigmatisation of children diagnosed with DLD. Our research highlights how the friction of divergent approaches to dis/ableism facilitate the reconsideration of the nature of difference in early childhood.