In order to challenge individual deficit imperatives and discursive binaries of “normality and abnormality,” which have traditionally held sway over the education of children with presumed special educational needs (SEN), it is crucial to provide alternative and, hence, liberating, theorizations of special education. These new theorizations should be conceptualized and articulated in terms of the incessant interplay of unequal power relationships. This article aims to use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to expose the ways in which children with presumed SEN are disempowered by the policy framework of a particular sociopolitical context. In so doing it will be possible to expose and critically examine the ways that power manifests itself through language, thus identifying and demystifying the interplay of unequal power relationships that give rise to and perpetuate discursive fabrications of “normality” and “special educational needs.”
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