Thanks for the explanation, Shelley. I do see the contrast between
people-first and the social model. I think there are a couple of other
interesting historical complications to the story, too.
First, I believe that PWD language was adopted at a time when a lot of US
advocates were following the ICIDH convention of contrasting disability (a
biomedical condition) with handicap (an outcome of inaccessibilty). This
vocabulary has been replaced by the impairment/disabiilty distinction (which
came like the Beatles from Britain). I know that the social model is much
more nuanced than the ICIDH, but the old disability/handicap pair did at
least _some_ of the same work as the impairment/disability distinction. So
the _intention_ of the folks who introduced PWD was to say something more
like "person with an impairment" than "person with a disability" in the
modern social-theory meaning of disability. This is meant just as a
historical observation, not an argument against your favored terminology.
The disability/handicap distinction is dead. (Too bad for my 1992 paper on
the environmental concept of handicap. My students read it last week, and I
have to change all of their vocabulary next week. :-( )
Second, to many people's minds the decision about people-first language has
to do with one's own self conception. This can vary between individuals, and
between "impairment categories". A quote from Tanis's recent post:
-----Original Message-----
From: Tanis M. Doe <[log in to unmask]>
To: Shelley Tremain <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, September 25, 1999 7:45 AM
Subject: Re: People first in canada
>I do think people with developmental disabilities such as
>those representing themselves in the self advocacy movement world wide
>have more of a reason to gow people first language because of the stigma
>associated with diagnostic categories like autism, downs syndrome and
>other impairment related labels.
In fact many autistic activists _oppose_ person-first language because they
consider autism to be essential to "who they are." Like many Deaf people,
these autistic people say things like "I wouldn't be me if I were not
autistic." Person-first language was intended to depict impairments as
secondary, relatively unimportant aspects of a person. It is important to
some individuals to think of themselves in this way, just as it is important
to others to identify themselves with their "impairment category".
(Impairment category is obviously an especially bad term here, because
people who self-identify in this way do not think of themselves as
_essentially_ impaired, but rather as essentially Deaf, or autistic.) Again
this is not inconsistent with your program, just an observation about some
other reasons vocabulary might be favored.
Third, one disadvantage of your preferred language is that it is merely
_consistent_ with the social model of disability to a greater extent than
PWD language is. It is also consistent with the medical model of
disability, because it pretty much matches ordinary speech. That is, when
someone refers to disabled people I have no idea whether or not they
understand the social model. It's a bit like the Deaf/deaf distinction,
which is imperceptible in spoken language (a very nice little irony, I
think). But if your main concern is to remove a conflict between theory and
vocabulary (rather than to force people to be self-conscious whenever they
talk about disability) that's not a big concern.
o
[saving on consonants today]
--
Ron Amundson
University of Hawaii at Hilo
Hilo, HI 96720
[log in to unmask]
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