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Larry
Thanks for your comments.  At some poiint in the future diversity may be celebrated rather a source of discrimination and disadvantage and language will reflect this.  Dyslexic and dyslexia sound fine to me, though dyscalculiac seems to me at least a bit difficult to say.  Etymology can be helpful though I would suggest it is how words are used now, rather than what they originally meant that are important.
 
I have a paper on stigma and assistive technology which references quite a lot of the literature.

M.A. Hersh (2013). Deafblind People, Stigma and the Use of Communication and Mobility Assistive Devices, Technology and Disability, vol. 25(4), pp. 245-261. 


In rather a different context I have done some work on stereotyping and scapegoating, some of which may be interesting, but not particularly related to disability.


M.A. Hersh (2013). Barriers to Ethical Behaviour and Stability:  Stereotyping and Scapegoating as Pretexts for Avoiding Responsibility. Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 37(2), pp. 365-381.


Regards
Marion





 

On 02/05/2018 22:12, Larry Arnold wrote:
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It is a problem which is all I can say though I probably won’t.

It is the eternal struggle for language that is both accurate and also free of connotation, and that never happens. 

The ‘sacred’ social model falls apart in confusion, but one has to look back I expect to the origins of these various terms, how they were used, by who, and what they were intended to signify.

Take the term learning disability. I may be wrong, but as I understand it, it originated in the USA, possibly the Orton society, I am a bit hazy in my dotage, as an alternative to the unpleasantly medical sounding “dyslexia” because of course it always sounds more medical in Greek unless that is your native language when it just means what it does.  It was considered to be less stigmatising, although I am not sure that stigma was anything more than part of plant biology then, but I digress, the intention was as a euphemism, (more Greek) 

It’s meaning seemed to change the other side of the Atlantic, and elsewhere to what when I was growing up was called “backward” in French “en retard” or “late” to signify delayed intellectual development in general and for reasons, when, where and why I do not know. Difficulty was introduced initially as a euphemistic synonym for “disability” which of course meant handicap, which of course meant, and so on..

Problem number two, having just introduced the term “intellectual” what precisely does that mean? I mean we think we know (never mind cognates of) what cognition means, but then there is cogitation, all from the Latin this time and much via French I think in its introduction to English. Is to think, and to know different? I dunno? How would I am just an embodied mass of competing attention systems trying to establish some sort of homeostasis (oh dear more Greek) 

At the end of the day all of us only know and understand what we can, and that in itself mediated by what we are exposed to, and what has existed prior to that which has contributed to that status. How do you put that into Identity first speak? 

Language of course is not there to describe anything or attribute meaning in the sense of accuracy, it is there to give social meaning, and most of the time is just noise. If I listen to myself having gone live at this time of the evening on Facebook, you can tell how much of it is just filling and noise. Oh well, I am not a proper linguist since I have limited reading and no qualification whatsoever on the matter, but what I do suggest is that if you look a little more deeply into anything I have posted here, you will find a wealth of literature behind it somewhere though you might have to go outside of your native understanding of disability studies and away from the “bubble” to find it. In terms of talking about it, there is definitely more than one book to it, and not a subject you can really do justice to in a short email. I have not even touched the other deeply offensive terms, offensive not because the words are offensive but because of the thinking behind them and their
 origins is (are) that were introduced as categories during the “Age of reason” and on into the 19th century fascination and fixation upon taxonomies, all of which prefigured where we are now, which has been reaction and in some senses recursion into that.

Anyway history before I was (not the only) PhD in the village (yes I found another one living not so far away today on the estates, and hey with an interest in “identity” but that is a diversion) The DWP had me down as a person with cognitive and learning difficulties. Well essentially all that means is that there were barriers to learning, and holes in what I am capable of knowing, though I think I would more readily describe them nowadays more in terms of a perceptual constellation where there is some mismatch with the ideal in Early 21st Century post enlightment, neo liberal society.

Phew I think I am done, if not undone.

Larry

 

From: The Disability-Research Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of m.hersh
Sent: 01 May 2018 20:13
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: request

 

Hi
Thanks to everyone who comments on dis/ability, hegemony etc - useful comments and very interesting discussion.  When work permits I will add a few more points.

I have a further request, again in the context of the special section I am editing.  What are your views on the terms learning disabilities, learning difficulties, cognitive impairments, intellectual disabilities and the associated identity first versions?  Are there differences in the meaning?  If not, which terms are the most empowering/least offensive?  I generally use identity rather than person first, but sometimes use person first in the case of longer expressions which can be more difficult to say.  What do you think about this in this case.  And if person not identity first, then single or plural impairment/disability?

I hope that all makes sense.

I will also contact People First and see what they think.
Regards
Marion


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