Abstract

The present study aims to characterize the discourse of a group of adults with intellectual disability through the analysis of the modalities of the utterance in order to understand the discursive positioning the subjects have with regard to the challenges of an independent life. For this, a qualitative investigation was designed. This led to the execution of six focus groups, in which eight adults with intellectual disabilities participated. The topics covered were independent life, friendship, family, work and health. As a result, a transcribed corpus of 88.494 words was created and examined using the Analysis of Discourse as a method of study. Among the main results, the presence of epistemic statements in the five thematic areas stands out, giving evidence that they know and are aware of the impact that the areas of action of an independent life have on their lives and they know how to perform in each of them, with their strengths and limitations. On the other hand, a complex aspect is that alethic statements are those with the least presence in the corpus, which indicates the scarce sense of projection they conceive for their future, a situation that is related to the Chilean context and development opportunities that public policies can offer to this group of citizens.