Intellectual disabilities, challenging behaviour and referral texts: a critical discourse analysis

The texts of referrals written by workers in residential services for people with learning difficulties1 constitute sites where contemporary discourses of intellectual disabilities are being constructed. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to examine referrals made to a Community Learning Disability Team (CLDT). The study finds referral forms position the person with intellectual disabilities as a problem to be solved, as in need of surveillance, and show evidence of the routinisation of daily life, surveillance, and mortification of the self.