[nabs-l] Are we blind people or people who are blind?

[Arielle Silverman]

I saw the below article on another list and thought it was very
interesting. What do you guys think?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: LILITH Finkler <lilithfinkler at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:41:42 -0300
Subject: New Article: "Person-first language: Noble intent but to what effect?"
To: DISABILITY-RESEARCH at jiscmail.ac.uk


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 or
its licensorsAll editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of
the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical
Association.NewsPerson-first language: Noble intent but to what
effect?Roger Collier-Author AffiliationsCMAJKenneth 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).
“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.”If a person-first language
advocate had commissioned this sign, it would read: “CHILD WITH AUTISM
AREA.”Image courtesy of © 2012 ThinkstockSuggesting 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). 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).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).
“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). 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).“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).Part III:
Person-first language: Laudable cause, horrible
prose(www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.109-4338).Facebook Google+
LinkedIn Reddit StumbleUpon TwitterWhat's this?Responses to this
articleMaria Z GittaDo we really need to ask 'to what effect'?CMAJ
published online November 7, 2012Full Text
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