This thesis examines the use of pejorative language relating to autism across two major digital platforms, Twitter and Twitch. It focuses on how terms such as “autistic” and “sperg” circulate as slurs, memes, and cultural shorthand, often stripped of their diagnostic context, and how such uses contribute to the production and maintenance of stigma in online environments.
A mixed-method approach was used, combining quantitative analysis with elements of critical discourse analysis. More than 42,000 Twitch messages and 2,900 tweets were coded for tone, context, and discursive function, and a follow-up survey explored participants’ exposure to these terms and their emotional and social responses. The findings show that hostile and sarcastic uses of autism-related language are widespread and normalised, including the mocking recontextualisation of clinical labels and the near-total weaponisation of slang terms such as “sperg” and “assburgers”.
Drawing on frameworks of discursive power (Foucault, 1972), linguistic marginalisation (Cameron 1995; 2012), epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007), and critical discourse analysis, the thesis examines how diagnostic labels become forms of verbal harm. Platform comparison highlights how Twitch’s live moderation enables some resistance, whereas Twitter’s static format facilitates the repetition and amplification of hostile terms.
These linguistic patterns reflect broader cultural processes in which disabled identities are trivialised or used as shorthand for failure. They also raise questions about responsibility: how platform design and moderation shape what is seen, said, and silenced.
As a diagnosed autistic researcher, my positionality informs this work through an awareness of language as a tool of both harm and resistance. Rather than generalising all online discourse, the study argues that even casual uses of diagnostic terms can accumulate into cultural harm, and that these effects warrant closer scrutiny in digital settings.
