THE REPRESENTATION OF LEARNING DISABILITY IN THE JOURNALISTIC LANGUAGE Gioia Feliziani Doctor in Communication Science INTRODUCTION The aim of my research is to analyse the images and cultural representations of learning disability through its characterisation by the media. This means, above all, to make “a census of absence”, since learning disabilities are seldom presented by the media, compared to other forms of disability, like physical and sensorial ones. That is surprising mostly because learning disabilities are a widespread reality: as far as frequency, length and consequences are concerned, mental disorders are the main cause of suffering and disability in the world (C.N.C.A, 2000). Many studies have been carried out on the cultural representation of disabled people, mostly in Great Britain1. They showed that the representation of disabled people in the media, as well as in other forms of art such as literature, filmography, photography, etc, witnesses the cultural and social oppression involving the subjectivity of disabled people in contemporary society. Furthermore, this research also showed that the building process of an image of disability is often under-discussed: “Models tend to be static and do not necessary reflect contradictory representation and change over time. They help us “fit” media stores in to boxes, but do not necessary aid in a more complex analysis of the process involved disability construction. Thus overall, the variety of elements of media analysis necessary to understand disability cannot be reduced to a simple categorization of content, but require a complex sensitivity to multiple dimensions of the process” (Meekosha H. And Dowse L., 1997b, p. 11). In particular, the way disabled people are represented by journalists aroused problems. The criteria for building news, plays a delaying and restraining role for mass media, that always looks for extraordinary, unconventional and deviant events or, vice-versa, for what can give safety, such as clichés. Consequently, disability is very often represented with extreme, pietistic or spectacular stereotypes, capable of arousing strong emotions and audience participation. As it is a complex and many-faceted subject, disability fits the pace of journalistic production badly, which is frantic and characterised by a limited word count/ airtime. This leads to a simple reading, broken into fragments, made up of a series of individual stories, “human cases” described out of an appropriate context and of a closer examination of the subject. As far as learning disabilities are specifically concerned, the means of information often link it to crime news, to suffered or perpetrated violence, to sterilisation or, in Italy, to the strong debate about the closing of mental hospitals in the Eighties. All that, together with the still frequent confusion between learning disability and mental illness, contributed to the growth of the “social alarm” and the “embarrassment” with which this subject is dealt. In this research, I am going to analyse the image of learning disability in a different context from the ones mass media generally use: sport. In order to do that, I chose six newspaper articles and a TV report on Italy 2003 Special Olympics National Summer Games. I chose the particular context of a Special Olympics event because, thanks to my work experience there2, I deeply understand the message that this organisation wants to spread. Special Olympics is an international organization dealing with sport training and athletic competitions in different Olympic disciplines, both for adults and children with learning disability. In this context, sport does not mean a simple competition, but it is a means of supporting personal growth, the autonomy and the whole integration of people with mental retardation. For that reason, in parallel with each sport event, other important initiatives are carried out, in order to involve athletes, their families, volunteers and the audience, thus creating a moment of socialization and sensibilization. By working as a media relation, I had the opportunity to directly survey the journalists’ approach to this event and, in general, to the subject of mental retardation. In particular, I directly followed the recording filming of the TV report I am going to analyse, from the first contact with the journalists to the moment of registration, checking their intentions in terms of representation, also through interviews with the programme editors and with the involved journalists3. METHOD OF ANALYSIS During my analysis, I will try to underline the stereotypes and the prejudices about learning disability according to the following typologies: 1. Content stereotypes: analysis of the thematic frames where learning disability and related subjects are placed. 2. Stereotypes of iconography and linguistic representation4 3. Stereotypes dealing with the attribution of discourse authority: I will analyse who can mostly speak about disability and its related subjects. In my analysis I firstly took into consideration of the current affairs from the period in which the 2002 Special Olympics National Summer Games event happened (which includes all the other contemporary events and news, that could have influenced the journalistic representation, in terms of way of dealing with the subject and importance given). In order to analyse the newspaper articles and the TV report, I took into consideration both elements external to the text (context and paratext) and textual ones (visible and linguistic elements). The analysis of the latter was based on the following items, which were analysed when both separately and when they are connected. Analysis of linguistic elements (analysis unit: for the newspapers, each single para-textual element and phrase, while for the TV report each single para-textual element and interview). Items have been divided into three parts: one is about content (dealt subjects, meaning areas, discourse subjects, tone, discourse authority); one is a linguistic part (disability terminology, that is the terminology used to refer to people with mental retardation); and finally, the last part is about “representation”, where I underlined the most strongly learning disability-related features, by taking them from the text (role, ability, behavioural features). Analysis of visible elements: (analysis unit: photos for the newspapers and each single shot for the TV report). For the image analysis, items are: relationship with the text (generically or specifically), represented subjects, connotations/meaning areas, photos subjects, characterisation of the subjects (individuals, homogeneous group, heterogeneous group), type of handicap, sex, related abilities, behavioural features, analysis of subtitles and titles. Furthermore, for the analysis of the TV report, I took into consideration meta-communicative elements (voice tone, relationship between contents and speakers’ behaviour) and, for the analysis of the interview in the studio with Alfredo Scarlata, some means of conversation analysis (turn allocation, pre-allocation, pauses and silences organisation). ANALYSIS OF THE TV REPORT The examined report was broadcast on June, 17th, 2002, in “Racconto Italiano” (“An Italian Story”), on Rainews24 Magazine, a RAI satellite channel entirely devoted to news, which also deals with social subjects, with special attention to Italian people living abroad, since this programme is also internationally broadcast. “Racconto Italiano” is an informative, cultural programme. According to Besio S. and Roncarolo F. (1996), such programmes present disability in a different way from TV news, dominated by extraordinary aspects and, consequently, by pietistic tones and the search of “super-heroes”. Since informative-cultural programmes are less interested in the logic of events and since discussed subjects are put in the foreground by editors’ sensibility, less importance is given to political news, while greater attention is devoted to the cultural dimension of disability. Furthermore, as noted by the editorial programme of “Racconto Italiano” and by the journalists themselves in the interviews, news is strongly personalised: the story is built through its protagonists’ words and great importance is given to single, personal stories5. The report is made of six extracts from interviews, two of which conducted with Alessandro Palazzotti, Special Olympics Italian President, and two with Chiaristella Vernole and Zita Peratti, two national coaches. An important role was played by the story of a single athlete, Silvia, through her mother’s words, Lina Mascarello, and her trainer’s, Mariangela Poncato. The filmed report was followed by a live interview with Alfredo Scarlata, a Special Olypmics athlete and an actor. The analysis of the different parts of this TV report showed that learning disabilities have often been represented through simplified and stereotyped images. As stated by the journalist Marco Bariletti during the interview, the message supposed to be sent by the report is that sport helps people with learning disabilities to integrate themselves into society: this is why great importance was given to “transformation” stories6. In the first interview, Alessandro Palazzotti states that people with a learning disability initially suffer from marginalisation. It is only thanks to the sport organisation’s trainer that they manage to be integrated in the realm of non-disabled people by gaining physical fitness and self-confidence, which seem to represent two criteria of normality, in this situation. The same theme is proposed in the presentation of Silvia’s story, through her mother’s words, Lina Mascarello, and her trainer’s, Mariangela Poncato: through the exasperation of sensationalistic tones, the latter even seems to become a miracle-maker. In this case, the mentioned “normality criteria” are communicative capacities: the athlete had difficulties in relating to the others because of the lack of these capacities. Silvia is described by her trainer as a “non persona” (“non person”), “doveva ancora nascere” ( “she still had to be born”), “un guscio” (“a shell”), “un uovo” (“an egg”). At the linguistic level, we find here the stereotype of “handicap as a barrier to a full and happy life”, which is a variant of “better dead than disabled”. These are two of the disability images in the media underlined by the American researcher J. Nelson (1994). It is as if communication problems prevented people with learning disability from acquiring their own subjectivity. The “loss of personality” of disabled people was stressed also at an iconographic level. Even though two clips of the report are devoted to Silvia’s story, in most cases she plays a neutral/absent role. During the interview with her mother, Silvia is not present, while she is during the interview with her trainer, but it is as if she were not there, because she does not speak. She is thus fixed in her role as disabled person, “Does he take sugar”?7. In TV programmes, this strategy is often used to refer to people with cognitive delay (Besio, S. and Roncarolo F., 1996: 283-284), probably because of communicative problems8. This method, adopted by “Racconto Italiano”, also struggles with the message supposed to be sent through Silvia’s story, that is benefits deriving from sport activity to people with mental retardation. The representation of these people as insecure people who need assistance was also confirmed, in the report, by all the images of athletes doing sport activity with their trainer’s support. Furthermore, during interviews, only the name of mentally retarded people (Silvia)was give, as simply their name and surname (Alfredo Scarlata) and their sporting role was never clearly mentioned, unlike in interviews with able- bodies people (as it often happens on TV programmes, Besio S. and Roncarolo F., 1996). Thus, it is shown that there is no possible acknowledgement for these people, apart from their role as a disabled person. It is also showed that the stereotype of the person with mental retardation as an “eternal child” is always present: these people are inevitably considered “less than others”, since they suffer from mental deficiency. The athlete Silvia is designated by her trainer with the term “ragazzina” (literally meaning “Kid”), even though she is nineteen and these athletes are often filmed while playing and having fun. Sometimes, the “reversed stereotype” is proposed, that is “the hyper-enhanced disabled person”, where actions and abilities become extraordinary , since they are related to the protagonist’s disability. The TV report’s title is “Con una marcia in più”( literally meaning “Being a cut above”) and it underlines the extraordinary features of people with mental retardation, by using emotional tones. Furthermore, while describing her own story and her daughter’s, Lina Mascarello often uses the adjective “special” and so does Alessandro Palazzotti while describing, in general, people with learning disability9. The stereotyped image of people suffering from Down’s syndrome as incredibly affectionate and kind-hearted was presented many times during the report thanks to images; this is particularly clear in a shot starting with a handshake (symbol of love, union, fraternity) and then widening until it includes two smiling and fond-looking athletes with Down’s syndrome. The aim of this image is to raise emotional participation and tenderness. The interview in the studio with the Special Olympics athlete Alfredo Scarlata particularly concentrates on the fact that he is an actor and played a role in the film “Ti voglio bene Eugenio”, starring with Giuliana De Sio and Giancarlo Giannini, two well-known Italian actors. Sensational tones are used to emphasise this situation, which is special, far from being ordinary and whose result is a stereotyped representation of disability, often made by the media: the “disability champion” (Besio S. and Roncarolo F., 1996, Masotti G., 1999), with stories of people capable of doing extraordinary things despite their disability. Furthermore, in the report we can find many “simplified” and “reassuring” images of mental retardation. The majority of the people filmed suffer from Down’s syndrome, a clearly recognizable deficit which can be easily communicated through images. The informative aspect is thus neglected. Down’s syndrome often becomes the symbol of learning disability: it is, actually, only one of the many facets (even though the most “evident”) of a vast and diverse reality. Fortunately, people with learning disability are also represented, even though seldom, as active people, who chose to devote themselves to sport. In the interview with Zita Peratti, the Gymnastics National Coach, the main topic deals with benefits for disabled people deriving from sport activity. Also in this case, there are hints to the thematic of “transformation” and partial or total autonomy is what the disabled person should aim at. The difference is that the disabled person is an active person, capable of using sport as a means of improving his/herself. In interviews, people with mental retardation are usually designated with the generic term “person”, whose handicap, condition or “being special” is seen as an associated feature and not as the person him/herself (“special person”, “person with disability”, “disabled young people”). The generalising effect of the linguistic stereotype is thus limited. Furthermore, we can notice that the term “Handicap” was never used. When the term “athletes” is used, it is never associated with “deficiency” or “handicap”. During the interview in the studio, despite the embarrassment at the beginning and the sensational, sometimes paternalistic, tones of the interviewer, the athlete-actor presented his story, that is the story of a person leading a life of fun, work and interests, by showing autonomy of thought and firmness. This data confirms what underlined by S. Besio and F. Roncarolo (1996) in their analysis: the interview in the studio gave a more positive image of disabled people, if compared with the filmed reports and that witnesses the benefits deriving from meeting and having a direct contact with “diversity”. Furthermore, the journalist who made the filmed report decided not to show images which were too shocking and morbid. Many authors (Masotti G., 1999, Besio S. and Roncarolo F. 1996, Ross K., 1997, Poiton A., 1997) have underlined that some TV programmes, also dealing with medicine, often dwell upon morbid details, without a narrative aim, just in order to strike and arouse the audience’s voyerism. NEWSPAPER ARTICLES The analysed newspaper articles are taken from “La Nuova di Venezia” and “Il Gazzettino di Venezia”, two newspapers dealing with international, national and local news. Although the Special Olympics event had a national importance and involved nearly 4000 people (athletes, families and volunteers), all the articles were published on the local news. This data, which could be read as a down-grading of an event dealing with learning disability, must also be analysed by taking into consideration the fact that, in those days, the Football World Cup was taking place. Since football is a very popular sport in Italy, all sport magazines devoted most of their pages to it, leaving a few to those sports considered as “less important”. However, the local press’s capacity to influence the public is remarkable, since it put the theme of disability closer to the readership’s daily life. Furthermore, another important data is that most articles were published on the pages devoted to general news, rather than to sport ones. The tendency to pour everything dealing with disability into general news was already remarked by V. Bussadori (1994), who concludes by stating: “come dire che nel binomio handicap/ cultura-sport-mobilità ha sempre maggior peso il primo termine” [ibidem, p.28].( my translation: “ that is to say that in the pair handicap/culture-sport-mobility the former always carries more weight”). In almost all the analysed articles, the person with mental retardation and other related subjects is hidden by the prevailing importance of politics and show business, with a predominance of reading keys based on piety (support and assistance) and emotions (solidarity), and with the representation of the disabled person as needing assistance/safety, which is particularly evident when the Authorities deal with this subject. The meaning areas of piety, of the need of support/aid and of the problems/drama of these situations are predominant when dealing with the family subject (“Il Gazzettino”, June 2nd , 2002). In the article published on “Il Gazzettino di Venezia” on June 2nd, 2002, a pietistic image of a mother is proposed, also emphasized by the adjective “anziana” (literally meaning “old”): she sacrifices herself to the hard assistance of her son, here seen nearly as a “disgrace”, thus following the stereotype “which divides people who suffer from disability from those who do not, which emphasises their differences, their need for protection, moral and material assistance” (Masotti G., 1999). He is condemned to misfortune and marginalisation in particular after his parents’ death (there are hints to the “after us” subject). Also the press presented the disabled person’s “reversed stereotype” (“Il Gazzettino”, Wednesday, June 5th, 2002). The emphasis put on the fact that “normal” actions become “special” for disabled people strengthens the opposition normal/different, where accomplished actions acquire something more, because of their protagonists’ deficiency. Furthermore, the stereotyped image of people with learning disability as extraordinarily kind-hearted and affectionate, capable of showing great joy, is proposed (“Il Gazzettino”, Thursday, June 6th, 2002). Problems dealing with people with learning disability’s emotional sphere were evident during the conference organized by Special Olympics and which took place contemporarily with the sport event and entitled “Handicap e sessualità: il silenzio, la voce e la carezza” (literally meaning:“Handicap and sexuality: the silence, the voice and the caress”). ( “Il Gazzetino, Saturday, June 6th , 2002)10. Also the press gave vague and general interpretations of disability, such as, for example, in the use of photos. On “La Nuova “ of May 30th, a photo shows a competition of physically disabled people, although Special Olympics is a sport event devoted to people with learning disability. CONCLUSIONS Many personal, social and historical factors lay behind the spread of stereotypes and prejudices about learning disability11. These three levels interact through communication and create, in history, many shared representations as a cultural answer to the diversity of people with learning disability12. These representations are often contradictory and they did not follow each other in a straightforward way, but they rather continue to co-exist and they create a barrier to a full integration and acknowledgement of disabled people in society. The media representation is the place where common images about disability are produced or re-produced and shared (Moscovici S. and Farr R. M., 1984). My linguistic and semiotic analysis of the newspaper articles and of the TV report dealing with 2002 Special Olympics National Summer Games showed that journalism often favoured interpretations based on emotions, solidarity and extraordinary aspects, where sport is seen more as a means of rehabilitation, rather than as active participation and competition. Furthermore, the sport aspect was neglected, nothing was said about competitions and more attention was devoted to the sentimental qualities and the playfulness of the athletes, rather than their will and athletic talents. Therefore, although the representation of people with learning disability in a context of sport participation encouraged a positive and active confrontation of this subject, there were often stereotypes and prejudices, which correspond to the widespread cultural representations of learning disability that overlapped during history. Besio S. and Roncarolo F. (1996) summed them up in “The refusal of difference”, “The denial of difference”, “Extraordinary diversity” and “Acknowledgement of difference and of its auto-determining aspect”: * The refusal of difference: according to some shared rules, society identifies what is “different”, “deviant” and, consequently, “labels” it and creates a normalisation and social exclusion process, thus trying to restore the “normality” endangered by the “deviant” person. Social marginalisation (Goffman E., 1963) is the consequence of this process. During history, this process was made concrete by physical elimination and the creation of ghettos, symbolising unworthiness of living in the society of “normal” people. What is significant in this context is the fact that the mass media seldom deal with disability, in particular with mental retardation. A variant of this attitude is that of “personal tragedy”, where the existence of the disabled person and the possibility of building a relationship with him/her is recognised. However, in this relationship, the disabled person is put in a inferior and dramatic role. I have seen that, at a journalistic level, for disabled people this attitude turns into the lack of discourse authority and the frequent use of the disability’s image as a dramatic condition and a barrier to a full, happy, autonomous and mature life. * The denial of difference. This attitude is certainly more evolved than the former and it leads, on the one hand, to the acceptance of difference, on the other hand, to the disrespect of it. Diversity must be eliminated, cancelled. From this point of view, in the standardisation of society, the person’s right to be different from the others and to have different needs is not recognized: the person has rather the “duty” to be. We have seen that this idea was reproduced, especially in the TV report, by using the subject of “transformation” and by indicating criteria of “normality” which have to be acquired, in order to be fully integrated in society. All that implies a “medical” outlook of mental deficiency, seen as an illness that has to be treated by doctors (De Rosa A.S., 1997). * Extraordinary diversity. This attitude confirms the denial of diversity and it turns into the “tendency to look at disabled people as they were reversed heroes, people with extraordinary features: rare heart-kindness or special ability, or unusual tenderness, sometimes a particular perfidy” (Besio S. and Roncarolo F., 1996, p. 29). In journalistic language, this representation is very frequent, as stressed also by my analysis. As stated in the introduction, the cause of that must certainly be found in the journalistic criteria of dealing with news, where the search for extreme and sensational aspects is put in to the foreground13. * Acknowledgement of difference and of its auto-determining aspect. According to this idea, the disabled is an individual, distinguished from the others, who interact in society naturally. While in the former attitude the disabled person had to be normalised to society, now it is society itself which has to be normalised to the disabled person, by recognising his/her distinctiveness. Diversity is seen as a richness and it must therefore be enhanced. Consequently, there is the need for solutions allowing everyone’s participation. All that implies a media representation centred on the person, whose disability is a feature and not, therefore, a “distorting lens” through which to look at him/her and thus surrounding all the spheres of his/her life with an aura of “being special”. This image is seldom presented by the media and we have seen it in particular in the TV report not as a choice taken consciously, but as the natural result of the meeting with the disabled person’s diversity. These views are, clearly, opposed and, yet, they co-exist in the media, at different levels of analysis, thus confirming that journalism has a low level of understanding of the disability culture, which results in poor information and confusion about the attitudes to adopt. In practice, in order to produce a change in attitudes towards disabled people, the media should not only show disability but also to illustrate our limits, our difficulty in thinking of reality as many-facetted, full of problems and positive aspects (which is often ignored).. The media is not only a shop-window where many realities are exposed, giving a set of confirmations just in order to please the audience: they also should stimulate a reflection which could lead to a change. 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XXIII Gare, animazioni cultura e spettacolo, in “Il Gazzettino”, anno 166, n.121, Edizione locale di Venezia, data Giovedì 30 maggio, p. XXIII Special Olympics, la fiaccola solidale, in “La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre”, Anno II, n. 145, p.38. Festeggiati gli atleti Special Olympics, in “Il Gazzettino”, anno 116, n. 124, Edizione locale di Venezia, data Domenica 2 giugno 2002, p. X. I ragazzi di “Special Olympics” a Portogruaro e S. Stino, in “Il Gazzettino”, anno 166, n. 127, Edizione locale di Venezia, data Mercoledì 5 giugno 2002, p. XV. L’abbraccio della città agli atleti disabili, in “Il Gazzettino”, anno 116, n. 127 , Edizione locale di Venezia, data Giovedì 6 giugno 2002, pag. V. Special Olympics una festa per millecinquecento, in “Il Gazzettino”, anno 116, n. 129, Edizione Locale di Venezia, data sabato 8 giugno 2002, p. XXI 1 In Great Britain there is an important tradition, linked to disabled people’s organizations, which also deals with the cultural study of disability, whose origin can be found in L. Battye’s work (1996) on the identity of disabled people and in the following discussion by A. Shearer (1981) and J. Camping (1981). These studies started the activity of disabled people’s movements, which led to the protest against the way disabled people were represented in public charity campaigns during the Eighties. There were demonstrations against sponsorship of performances like Telethon, blamed for giving a pietistic image of disability. In Italy, attention to media’s representation of disability is more than twenty years late and it is the result of few studies, particularly current affairs. Thanks to the new attention of the media towards disability, which had followed the Handicap International Year in 1981, and to pioneer work made by voluntary associations with a strong political connotation (above all the Community of Capodarco, in Italy, as far as disability is concerned), it is only at the end of the Eighties that there were new laws and that the first studies on the media’s representation of disability were carried out. As far as TV is concerned, Besio S. and Roncarolo F. (1996) carried out an interesting study specifically devoted to disability, where they analysed the programme schedule of RAI (the Italian radio and TV public station) on 1993 and 1994. Furthermore, some reports about the presence of social thematics, among which disability, in the three radio and TV public channels have been periodically published on the Internet site www.segretariatosociale.rai.it since 2000. As for newspapers, two important studies were carried out by the C.D.H. (Handicap Research Centre) of Bologna. The former deals with a specific subject, “Handicap and School” (Barnardi M., 1992), the latter includes a comparative analysis of newspaper articles dealing with disability published on 1990-1993 (Bussatori, V., 1994). Great interest was also aroused by the international project called Inter-media, born thanks to the co-operation of four social associations in Italy, Greece, Spain and France. It ended in 2001 and it carried out two studies: one is about the effects of information on the perception of difference by people, the other deals with the representation of the same subjects, among which disability, in the newspapers of the four countries (the final report can be found on the site www.elpendu.it) . In these studies, disability was generically dealt with: by using this word, authors meant mental, physical or sensorial handicap. 2 During the autumn 2001 I did a three-month training course at the Organizing Committee for the Special Olympics Summer World Games – Dublin 2003, in the Marketing and Communication Area. Furthermore, I worked at the Organizing Committee for the 2002 Italian Special Olympics National Summer Games. 3 Three interviews have been carried out: the first one with Novella Calligaris, Rainews24 Managing Editor; the second one with the journalist Marco Bariletti, who dealt with the filmed report; and the last one with Alessandro Baracchini, the journalist who interviewed the Special Olympic athlete Alfredo Scarlata in the studio. 4 According to L. Arcuri and M.R. Cadinu (1998), the language functions involved with stereotypes are three: 1. Transmitting. 2. Organizing information in people’s mind 3. Expressing the social identity of groups. The terminology we use to refer to a particular social group , that is disabled people, is thus not only a linguistic problem, since it also has a strong influence on how this group is seen in social terms. Linguistic labels are not fixed: there is a change in the way of describing behaviours and social groups as some behaviours are accepted and as integration policies are carried out. At the beginning of this century, in Italian, the term “infelice” (“unhappy”) was used to designate all sorts of disability and also in the following years language did not greatly changed, since the use of expressions like “minorato” (“under- mined”), “invalido” (“invalid”), “inabile” (”unfit”), and so on, struck root. As for my thematic, that is mental retardation, in the last century many linguistic stereotypes followed one another, from “idiotismo” (“idiotism”) to “semplici” (“simple people”), to the Boleana definition of “insufficienza mentale” (“mental deficiency”) and “sub- normali” (“sub-normal”), which went back to the classic idea of mental age. These terms, which were once used as neutral ones, and which have often a medical root, are now considered prejudicial terms. There is no agreement for the term handicapped”: this condition derives from the limits of social context and environment to adapt themselves to each person’s diversity. Consequently, it is considered unfair to use that term as for an intrinsic feature of the person. When referring to the person, there is more consent for terms such as “disabled” , “disabled person”, “person with disability” and “disability”. 5 As Masotti G. (1999) states, in TV language: “Il primate del visibile si impernia sull’esibizione di persone, non sulla lungaggine retorica: contano I volti, la simpatia degli atteggiamenti, l’emotività dei linguaggi” (Masotti G., 1999, p.69). (My translation:“the supremacy of what is visible is built through people’s exhibition, not through long, rhetorical speeches: what matters are faces, nice behaviour and language emotion”) The result is that personal characterisation is more emphasized, more fascinating for the audience and it leads to a simple narrative, which does not try to penetrate the complex territory of disability culture, since it is less reliable and more difficult to control. 6 In her study about disability representation in documentaries and reality shows, Ann Poiton (1997) focuses on four main themes: tragedy, transformation, normalisation, show business. The actors who help producers to build these stories are the therapists, the disabled people themselves and the organisations (usually, welfare institutes). They tend to play two important roles, according to the chosen subject: the “saviour” or the “victim”. According to Poiton, even when the story presented by documentaries is not that of a “victim”, the notion of “victim” is inseparable from the implicit or explicit, but always present, condition of refusal. The role of the “saviour” can be played by the trainer or by the therapist, but sometimes it can also be played by the disabled person him/herself. The effect on disability is that prejudices and stereotypes are represented as they are, rather than being changed. 7 In Great Britain, this expression is used for mentally defective people and it derives from a well-known TV programme on disability (Cumberbatch & Negrina, 1992: 92-97). 8 However, Marco Bariletti, the journalist who dealt with the report, admitted that the only case where he found communication problems with a mentally disabled person was Silvia’s one. He also did a good interview with two Special Olympics sailing athletes, Enrico and Matteo: but it was cut for time reasons and because Silvia’s story was more striking. 9 The association of the adjective “special”with the athletes who participate at the sport events is a feature of Special Olympics. But as it is stated by the International Special Olympics guidelines, the adjective “special”, which should stress the qualities and capacities of disabled people, could cause the opposite result, if abused: that is, the person would be collocated in a semantic field which is opposite to “normality” , far from what is ordinary (www.specialolympics.org). 10 The embarrassment surrounding this subject was also remarked upon by the study on handicap’s perception, carried out by R. Pigliacampo (1994), where the author underlines ordinary people’s perplexity or opposition to the fact that a disabled person could marry and build a family. In the particular case of people with learning disability, cultural stereotypes and behaviours worsen even more. As a matter of fact, the obviousness and repetition of some sexual attitudes of people with learning disability create fear and distress, since they reopen the whole question of “normal” people’s sexuality, seen as a particular, auto-erotic, homosexual, anyway wicked aspect of personality (Cartelli, 1993, p. 98-99). According once more to V. Bussatori (1994), most newspapers dealing with disabled people’s affectivity link it to rapes or to disabled people’s sterilization. 1. 11 The individual perceptions of the other: the need to simplify the world (Allport, 1954), the cognitive dissonance caused by the meeting with the other (Festinger, 1957), the wrong idea of perception perceived as assumption of an ideal model of man, and the consequent rejection of the one who “is not complete” and “not integrated” (Lascioli, 2000). 2. The need to recognize ourselves in a group into which we belong and in to which apply the efficient rules of western societies, with the consequent anguish of reflecting ourselves as a non satisfactory image, disabled, where all our frustrations and weakness are passed on (Rose, 1951; Rokeach, 1960; Callegari, 1994). Everything that seems different from the set social order, is conceived as dangerous and so as an object of hostility and attempt of removal. Moreover, regarding mental retardation, we can have difficulty in understanding the emotional state of “the other” (Pigliacampo, 1994). 3. Historical and cultural reasons. The function of prejudice and stereotype is to preserve and reproduce the social and political- economic system and so to protect the interest of those with power (Larocca, 1999; Mazzara, 1997). Moreover, disabled people have always been surrounded by a magic aura, as people that are on direct contact with God, with extraordinary human skills and at the same time the fear of that, of their mysterious world, with the consequent deionization and segregation. 12 Social Representation theory is a constructionist theory. That means that rather than seeing people as simply perceiving or mis- perceiving their social worlds, it threatens those worlds as socially constructed. Each social representation is made up of a mixture of concepts or ideas and images. And these are both in our minds and circulating in society, where they are trasmitted by conversations, media text and any kind of human social interaction. Social representations are the device to build our social worlds. They allow us to make sense of something that it is potentially unfamiliar as well as to evaluate it. As Moscovici suggested, all thought and understanding is based on the working of social representation, and underlines at least three instances, in which social representation are truly social: social representation is generated in communication, social representation provides a code of communication and social representation provides a way of distinguishing social groups. 13 In my opinion, this representation hides a magic/religious view of mental illness, of the “mad” man seen on the one hand as a mythological character, capable of being into contact with a dimension beyond this world, or, on the other hand, as a divine punishment and a “monster” (this view then turns into a “criminal” and deviant representation) (De Rosa A.S., 1997). Over the centuries, the figure of mentally ill people aroused opposed feelings of fear and sacral charm, since they were considered as capable of being into contact with a supernatural world. That also generated superstitions during the Middle Ages (people with mental retardation were burned on the stake like witches) and an ambiguous and often discriminatory attitude of Catholic and Protestant religions (Corazzieri G and L’Imperio A., 1994). 1