Beyond Communicative Norms: Neurodiversity, Cultural Values, and the Ethics of Autistic Communication

Abstract

The paper presents an Expectations about intelligibility, reciprocity, politeness, and appropriate self-presentation are culturally organized. In autism, this expectation raises the ethical question of when a standard for communication allows for shared understanding. And at what point does it mark participation conditional on conformity? This conceptual article investigates this question through a selective critical engagement with neurodiversity scholarship, the double empathy problem, epistemic injustice, and prosody research and social judgment. The communicative difference that can be observed, task-specific difficulty, and negative social evaluation are distinguished in it. Recent findings that do not support an all-same-neurotype advantage in empathic accuracy are considered evidence for interactional mismatch. The article proposes a framework of reciprocal communicative recognition based on functional justification, inclusive participation, interpretive accountability and supported agency. English-language education cases show how institutions can maintain legitimate learning aims while questioning unnecessary expectations about performance style. The framework neither denies disability nor treats cultural convention as sufficient ethical justification. It is a normative process for assessing communication needs rather than a validated intervention or an empirical account of any particular cultural community.