Pragmatic Language Impairment In Autistic-Savant Person Portrayed In The Good Doctor Film

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the kinds of pragmatic language impairments realized by an autistic-savant main character in The Good Doctor film, to describe the pragmatic language impairments realized by the character, and to investigate why the linguistic impairments were realized in the way they were. The descriptive qualitative method was used in this research. The data taken was from the utterances and the behaviors of the autistic-savant character, Shaun Murphy, from 18 episodes of season one of the film. There were 352 dialogues obtained consisting of pragmatic language impairments, both verbal and non-verbal language problems. The verbal language problems realized were violation of maxims, literal interpretation, monologue, pronoun reversal, politeness difficulty, pedantic speech, odd prosody, turn-taking violation, echolalia, and idiosyncratic use of language. While the non-verbal language problems realized were limited use of gesture, clumsy/gauche body language, limited facial expression, inappropriate facial expression, and peculiar/stiff gaze. Pragmatic language impairments were realized in the utterances and the behaviors. The linguistic impairments were realized the way they were because of the lack of comprehension, inability to talk based on context, difficulty at adjusting voice and tone, lack of mind reading skill, having trouble at maintaining a conversation, and incapability to use non-verbal language properly.