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

Thu Dec 13 20:23:26 UTC 2012

Hi, NABS,

         Don't you think it's up to the 
individual how they are are refered too by ol' 
Sighty, and others? This debate is pretty boring 
because I know how I feel most comfortable being referred too.
So, everybody figure out what works for you, and be content!
Car ----- 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;24:124). 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
>________________End of message________________
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