Recently,
my partner recommended an article about a topic we discuss a lot: identity
language—the words we use to name ourselves and our groups. Specifically, this
article challenged long-standing professional standards for talking about
people with disabilities. I’ll come back to this specific question in a minute,
but first, I want to talk about a broader issue that underlies this article:
the power of language to prescribe,
as well as describe, our experience.
This issue is especially important in the area of identity language because it
turns out that how we name people—ourselves and others—says a lot about how we
view those people. And that, in turn, shapes how those people—we or
others—experience the world.
For
example, consider the now-discredited term “imbecile.” For a time, it was
regarded not only as appropriate but as a precise scientific term for an
individual who scored in a particular range on tests that supposedly measured
mental capacity. The description/diagnosis was then invoked to confine people
to institutions. But it also did more. The word seeped into everyday language
as a label for people who were thought to have no place in society, people who
were beneath the rest of us. Eventually, it became a term for anyone who
behaved in a way that we thought was less than intelligent (which often meant
simply that we didn’t like something they did): “What an imbecile!” Over the
years, the experience of people who were given this label, the experience of
those who used the term, and institutions around the nation were shaped by
this word. Of course the same is true of words like “genius” or “gifted.”
People given these labels expect themselves, and are expected by others, to
achieve at superior levels. Our experience, their experience, and the society we
all inhabit are shaped by those expectations.
I
would argue that this is true of virtually all language: language creates
reality, so it’s never trivial. But it may be especially true of identity
language. I think about the shifts that happened when Stonewall protesters dared
to scrawl “gay pride” on walls in Greenwich Village, when 1970s feminists insisted on being called “women” rather than “girls,”
and when protests against systemic mistreatment were led by chants of “Black lives matter.”
It makes a difference when groups insist on taking control of the language that
describes—and also shapes—their lives.
But the
power of words can be insidious. Sometimes words have more power than we
realize, and we may be taken aback when something we say has an impact we
didn’t anticipate. This can easily happen with identity words. Anyone who’s
paid much attention to identity language has likely had this experience: We
recognize that it’s important for people to be able to name themselves, and we
try to use language that’s sensitive to that conviction. We really want to say the right thing, but the “right”
words keep changing. We make mistakes, we feel guilty, frustrated, regretful,
maybe put-upon by the constantly shifting nature of identity language. We may
be embarrassed at the almost inevitable “slips” that occur as language changes
faster than our own habits—or even faster than we can track it.
This
is a tricky issue. On the one hand, it makes total sense that folks’ sense of how
they prefer to be named will change and that new terms for marginalized groups
will emerge. Language is nothing if not dynamic, and given that identity-related
experiences change all the time, of
course the language surrounding identities will change. And to make things
even more lively, identity terms may vary not only historically but also
geographically, by age group, by race/ethnicity … and on and on. In this
ever-morphing morass of identity language, well-meaning people may feel like
it’s easier, safer to just avoid conversations where identity language might
come up—depriving everyone of opportunities to learn more about this thorny
thicket.
There’s
no easy answer to this dilemma. The bottom line seems clear to me: people have
the right to name themselves; doing so is crucial to their empowerment and
their self-esteem. We know from history that depriving people of that right is one of the first steps toward disempowering them, insisting
that they be who someone else wants
them to be. But it remains a challenge—a healthy one, but still a challenge—to
negotiate the terrain of identity language. It requires patience with one
another and expansive willingness to stay in conversation about who we all are,
how we each name ourselves, and why it matters.
So,
how does this apply to the article that triggered this blog?
The
article raised exactly this dilemma, but in a professional/academic context. By
way of background, the publication manual of my own professional field,
psychology, has specific guidelines about identity language, and adherence to
those guidelines is required whenever we publish in the field. The instructions
are straightforward: (1) Use “person-first” language where possible—first say
that you are talking about a person, then describe the characteristic that
makes them salient to this setting. So we use “individuals with autism” in
preference to “autistic individuals.” The point is that the characteristic
described is only one aspect of those persons; everyone is an individual first,
and can only secondarily be identified by particular characteristics. (2) Never
use an adjective that describes a
group as if it were a noun that defines
them. For instance, use “people with disabilities” rather than “the disabled.”
The rationale: there is always more to a person than any single adjective can
convey. Using a term like “the elderly” implies that this single adjective
defines everyone in the group uniformly and tells us everything that’s
important to know about them.
But
wait! Not so fast! The article in question challenged this long-standing,
confident analysis of the identity language question. The challenge came from listening
to the language of the disability movement and attending to the preferences of that
group—letting them name themselves rather than assuming that “we” (in this
case, professional psychology) have it “right” on their behalf. That perspective
led the article’s authors to question the universal use of “person-first.”
Instead, they argued, we should, at minimum, intersperse “disability-first” language.
In
concrete terms, this would mean saying “persons with disabilities” some of the
time and “disabled persons” some of the time. In reference to particular
disabilities, it would mean using “amputees” and “people with amputations” interchangeably.
The origin of this suggested change is a movement among disabled people based,
as I understand it, on two key critiques of person-first language:
(1) Always putting the person first and the disability later implies that the
disability is somehow shameful, so it should always be secondary. The
contemporary disability rights movement is based, in part, on the principle
that so-called disabilities are a form of human variation that should be
respected in the same way that other forms of variation are—not ignored, not
dismissed, not devalued. From this perspective, a disability is only a problem
if the physical and/or social environment makes it a problem. Using a wheelchair
to get around is not a limitation unless physical structures and social
attitudes make it difficult. So, if a disability isn’t shameful but is just a
form of human variation, why would we hide it behind “person with”? We don’t do
that with neutral variations. We don’t say “a person with tallness” or “an individual
with English language.” This is a great example of the shaping power of
language: by placing the disability second, we risk colluding, if
inadvertently, in the notion that it’s shameful.
(2) The use of “with” in person-first language implies that the characteristic is
sort of attached to and separable from the individual—like we might say “the
kid with the bike.” But in fact, disabilities are not separable; they are
present in every moment of the individual’s life. By using person-first
language, we risk denying this, implying that the person can (and maybe should)
live as if the disability could be set aside, like a child’s bike.
Now,
some might suggest that these arguments are stretching the point. No one really
means to trivialize disabilities by
their language. But neither did we mean to damage lives, develop unacceptable
biases, or create destructive institutions when we coined the term “imbecile.”
Only down the road, after we had test-driven it a while, did we realize the
problems that were created by this presumably descriptive word. Language is a
living thing, and we can’t know today what it will grow into tomorrow. So our
job is twofold: to pay attention to the impact, not just the intent, of our
language (a lesson I learned from my partner’s work in diversity domains) and
to be open to challenging and changing it.
This
article was a great reminder that none of us has this nailed down. Like the
field of psychology, we may have a perfectly good rationale for how we do
language—and until that rationale is challenged in a persuasive way, we’ll continue
to see it as perfectly sensible. But language is alive, and it will
change—despite our sensible rationale. Only when we adopt the new language will
we see our old linguistic habits as problematic. And then the new ones will assume
the stamp of “correctness.”
Until
they don’t.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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