The problem is that disability and disabled people are still seen
negatively. Otherwise, there would not be a need to distance the person
from the impairment by the use of people first language. The comment
about not defining a person by a diagnosis indicates a medical model
approach.
Marion
On 11/12/2012 18:27, Larry Arnold wrote:
> I am a person with Larry Arnold’s. Larry Arnold’s what you might imagine. Well
> in my case I have it rather bad, I have Larry Arnold’s everything, I seem to be
> quite unable to do anything about it. Good article with some of the usual
> suspects cited J
>
> I am a person with a moustache because I can shave it off it I wanted to, but I
> can’t shave off my autism, though I daresay some wish I could.
>
> Larry
>
> *From:*The Disability-Research Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *LILITH Finkler
> *Sent:* 11 December 2012 16:42
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* New Article: "Person-first language: Noble intent but to what effect?"
>
> Dear Colleagues. Please see article below from the current issue of the Canadian
> Medical Association Journal. The journal is publishing a
>
> series on "person first language". Lilith
>
> ===========================================================================================
>
> /
>
> /
>
> CMAJ/ December 11, 2012 //vol. 184 //no. 18 /First published November 5, 2012,
> doi: 10.1503/cmaj.109-4319
>
> ·© 2012 Canadian Medical Association <http://www.cmaj.ca/misc/terms.xhtml> or
> its licensors
>
> ·All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not
> necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association.
>
> ·*/News/*
>
>
> Person-first language: Noble intent but to what effect?
>
> *1.**Roger Collier
> <http://www.cmaj.ca/search?author1=Roger+Collier&sortspec=date&submit=Submit>***
>
> *-* <http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/18/1977.full.html?etoc>Author Affiliations
>
> 1./CMAJ/
>
> Kenneth St. Louis grew up with a moderate stutter that he eventually got under
> control in college. His struggle with stuttering led to an interest in
> speech-language pathology, which he now teaches at West Virginia University in
> Morgan-town. St. Louis is an expert in fluency disorders, including cluttering,
> a condition characterized by rapid speech with an erratic rhythm. Once, after a
> journal sent him the edited version of a paper he had submitted on cluttering,
> St. Louis noticed something curious.
>
> “They changed ‘clutterer’ to ‘person who clutters’ all the way through,” says
> St. Louis.
>
> The changes to St. Louis’ prose stem from the person-first (or people-first)
> language movement, which began some 20 years ago to promote the concept that a
> person shouldn’t be defined by a diagnosis. By literally putting “person” first
> in language, what was once a label becomes a mere characteristic. No longer are
> there “disabled people.” Instead, there are “people with disabilities.”
>
> No reasonable person would challenge the intent behind person-first language.
> Who, after all, would prefer to be known as a condition rather than as a person?
> But is this massive effort to change the language of disability and disease
> having any effect? Is it actually changing attitudes, reducing stigma or
> improving lives? Skeptics point to the nonexistent body of evidence. Advocates
> claim it starts with language and that results will follow.
>
> Words are indeed powerful, and they can perpetuate hurtful stereotypes and
> reinforce negative attitudes, suggests Kathie Snow, a disability rights advocate
> who runs the “Disability is Natural” website (www.disabilityisnatural.com
> <http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/>). “People with developmental disabilities
> have, throughout history, been marginalized and devalued because of labels,” she
> says. “Labels have always caused people to be devalued. It has caused people to
> be put to death, to be sterilized against their will.”
>
> Figure
>
> If a person-first language advocate had commissioned this sign, it would read:
> “CHILD WITH AUTISM AREA.”
>
> Image courtesy of © 2012 Thinkstock
>
> Suggesting that a diagnosis is a person’s most important characteristic
> reinforces the all-too-common opinion that people with disabilities have limited
> potential and society should expect little from them, Snow has written
> (www.disabilityisnatural.com/images/PDF/pfl09.pdf
> <http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/images/PDF/pfl09.pdf>). She suggests that
> the disability rights movement is changing language to be more respectful rather
> than merely politically correct, in a similar vein to past efforts by civil
> rights and women’s movements.
>
> “If people with disabilities are to be included in all aspects of society, and
> if they’re to be respected and valued as our fellow citizens, we must stop using
> language that marginalizes and sets them apart,” wrote Snow. “History tells us
> that the first way to devalue a person is through language.”
>
> The global movement to promote person-first language has been extremely
> successful. It is now standard in government documents around the world, as well
> as in scientific journals and many other publications. Widespread adoption of
> this grammatical structure is the reason that, present sentence excepted, this
> article will not refer to a stutterer, a cancer patient, a diabetic, a blind
> man, a deaf woman or an autistic person. It might, however, refer to a person
> who stutters, a person with cancer, a person with diabetes, a man who is
> visually impaired, a woman who is hearing impaired or a person with autism.
>
> But some people, including members of several disability groups, aren’t big fans
> of person-first language. They claim it is merely political correctness run
> amok, verbosity intended to spare hurt feelings yet accomplishing little more
> than turning one word into two or more words. Even worse, some suggest, tucking
> the names of diseases and disabilities in the shadows may have the opposite
> effect of what is intended. It could stigmatize words that were never considered
> derogatory or pejorative in the first place.
>
> St. Louis’ introduction to person-first language made him wonder if it actually
> had an effect on opinions about words used to label people with various
> conditions, including speech, language and hearing disorders (/J Fluency
> Discord/ 1999;24:1–24). He found that the person-first version of a label was
> regarded as “significantly more positive” in only 2% of comparisons. “For
> example,” wrote St. Louis, “with the exception of widely known terms that have
> stigmatized individuals (e.g., ‘Moron’), terms identifying serious mental
> illness (‘psychosis’) or dreaded diseases (‘leprosy’), person-first nomenclature
> made little difference in minimizing negative reactions.”
>
> There is no evidence that person-first terminology enhances sensitivity or
> reduces insensitivity, notes St. Louis, and yet health professionals and
> scholarly publishers are now among its strongest advocates. Good luck getting
> your work published in a scientific journal if you don’t conform. In the field
> of speech-language pathology, terms such as “person who stutters” or “child who
> stutters” have even become acronyms (PWS and CWS). To St. Louis, the notion that
> calling someone a PWS is more sensitive than calling them a stutterer is nothing
> short of ludicrous.
>
> “It’s not really about sensitivity,” says St. Louis. “It’s about: This is just
> the way it’s done.”
>
> Furthermore, suggests St. Louis, the sentiment expressed in communication is far
> more important than the linguistic circumlocutions present in the language. “If
> you are going to be a jerk,” he says, “you can be just as much of a jerk using
> person-first language as using the direct label.”
>
> Members of some disability groups have become so fed up with pressure to adopt
> person-first language that they have begun pushing back. The National Federation
> for the Blind in the United States has long opposed what it perceives as “an
> unholy crusade” to force everyone to use person-first language
> (www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090309.htm
> <http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090309.htm>).
>
> The federation’s main publication, the /Braille Monitor/, has unequivocally
> defended its right “to cling to its conviction that vigorous prose is a virtue
> and that blind people can stand to read one of the adjectives that describe them
> before they arrive at the noun”
> (www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090308.htm
> <http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm09/bm0903/bm090308.htm>).
> “Blind people we are, and we are content to be described as such.”
>
>
>
> Many people with diabetes are also surprised to learn that the word “diabetic”
> is now considered taboo. Who turned it into a moniker non grata? Not people with
> diabetes, apparently. Type “diabetic” and “tattoo” into Google Images and you’ll
> find thousands of people with the condition who have the word permanently inked
> on their skin. One of those people is Tanyss Christie, a mother of two from
> Chilliwack, British Columbia, who has “diabetic” tattooed on her inner left
> wrist in a style similar to a MedicAlert bracelet. Would she be upset if someone
> called her a diabetic?
>
> “No, I wouldn’t be offended,” Christie writes in an email. “Diabetes is me and
> who I am and I don’t need to hide that; I am a diabetic and have been for 29
> years. I say it strong because I survived such a hard disease and hope to [for]
> many more years.”
>
> The topic of person-first language seems to stir particularly heated debate
> among people affected by autism. In general, parents of children with autism
> appear to prefer person-first language. Some even suggest that saying “autistic
> child” is not much better than referring to someone with cancer as a “cancerous
> person.” Many adults with autism, however, believe that autism is central to
> their identity and prefer to use terms such as “autistic person.” This has been
> called identify-first language.
>
> Person-first language implies that autism can be separated from the person,
> which simply isn’t true, according to Jim Sinclair, an adult with autism who
> cofounded the Autism Network International. In a widely circulated essay,
> Sinclair wrote that autism is such an essential feature of his being that to
> describe himself as a person with autism would be akin to calling a parent a
> “person with offspring” or calling a man a person “with maleness”
> (www.cafemom.com/journals/read/436505
> <http://www.cafemom.com/journals/read/436505>). Attempting to separate autism
> from personhood also “suggests that autism is something bad — so bad that it
> isn’t even consistent with being a person.”
>
> Then there are those who take a more moderate position, varying their language
> according to their audience so that focus remains on their message rather than
> how it’s delivered. This is the approach taken by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, a
> writer who chronicles her “journeys with autism” on her blog
> (www.journeyswithautism.com <http://www.journeyswithautism.com/>).
>
> “I will use person-first (i.e. person with autism) and identity-first (i.e
> autistic person) language interchangeably, partly for the sake of variety, and
> partly to resist the ideologues on both sides. I will also vary my language to
> suit my audience. For example, if I’m talking with people who prefer
> identity-first language, I will use it. If I am talking to people who prefer
> person-first language, I will use it. If I am talking to a mixed group, I will
> likely mix my terminology,” Cohen-Rottenberg writes in an email. “I find that
> people’s feelings can run so high regarding language that, even if I find
> person-first language very problematic, I’ll use it with people who favor it so
> that we don’t end up getting derailed into language discussions and away from
> the issue at hand.”
>
> Editor’s note: First of a multipart series.
>
> Part II: *Person-first language: What it means to be a
> “person”*(www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4322
> <http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4322>).
>
> Part III: *Person-first language: Laudable cause, horrible
> prose*(www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4338
> <http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4338>).
>
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> Responses to this article
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> ·
>
> oMaria Z Gitta
>
> Do we really need to ask 'to what effect'?CMAJ published online November 7, 2012
>
> o*Full Text* <http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/18/1977.full.html/reply#cmaj_el_713495>
>
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