419591

Pragmatic Language Impairment in Autism: Application on the Character of Nadim in the Arabic Series Hala Khasa (Special Case)

Article

Last updated: 29 Mar 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Studies in Linguistics

Abstract

Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI) is considered one of the core symptoms of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study attempts to analyze PLI as displayed by the main character in Hala Khasa (Special Case) Egyptian series. The series was released in 2024 and tells the story of Nadim who is a young autistic lawyer. The research seeks to examine the pragmatic deficits displayed by Nadim on both the receptive and expressive language levels. Drawing upon Vicker (2009) and Vicente et al. (2024), the study proposes a compiled list for PLI features in ASD by merging similar categories under more general ones in order to avoid duplication and yield a more comprehensive model. A mixed approach is adopted in order to qualitatively account for the different deficits and calculate their frequencies. The results reveal that most of the pragmatic deficits displayed by the main character pertain to the expressive rather than the receptive language level, particularly in relation to dialogic rather than monologic discourse. This was primarily manifested in deficits in conversation skills and politeness. On the receptive level, on the other hand, most of the difficulties involved inability to interpret non-literal meaning, especially in the case of idioms and indirect speech acts. Since drama series are widely watched by people of different ages and from various backgrounds, the series may serve to raise awareness among Arab-speaking audience to ASD and the involved pragmatic language deficits which may eventually contribute to promoting inclusion in Egyptian and Arab society.

DOI

10.21608/tjhss.2025.344520.1294

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Hala Khasa Series, Pragmatic Language Impairment (PLI), Savant syndrome

Authors

First Name

Iman

Last Name

Mahfouz

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Humanities Department, College of Language and Communication (CLC), Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Alexandria

Email

imahfouz@aast.edu

City

-

Orcid

0000-0001-9080-2493

Volume

6

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

54729

Issue Date

2025-01-01

Receive Date

2024-12-14

Publish Date

2025-01-01

Page Start

243

Page End

268

Print ISSN

2636-4239

Online ISSN

2636-4247

Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/article_419591.html

Detail API

http://journals.ekb.eg?_action=service&article_code=419591

Order

419,591

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,087

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Transcultural Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Pragmatic Language Impairment in Autism: Application on the Character of Nadim in the Arabic Series Hala Khasa (Special Case)

Details

Type

Article

Created At

29 Mar 2025