The importance of language and terminology (From The Argus)

The importance of language and terminology

9:59pm Saturday 21st January 2012 in Blogs By Roy Pennington, Beach flaneur

I found this while beachcombing a local facebook -- Harvey is an activist -- his take on the issues command respect -- i have not foot-noted his references, though: his doctoral thesis is published elsewhere -- as the debate about Welfare Reform hots up, I will return to Harvey's analysis in later blogs.

(all this below is by Dr Robert Harvey Cowe):

The importance of language and terminology

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein, 1922)

The language and terminology used to describe disability and disabled people is not just a matter of simply the removal of offensive words, merely a semantic issue or political correctness (Oliver, 1994). Rather it is about the crucial issue of causality (Oliver, 1996), “the politicisation of the definitional process (p.29) and “the way language is used to shape meanings and even create realities” (Oliver, 1996, p.34).

Language is about power, domination and control and it emerges through the ability of some groups in society to impose meaning on others, and is a product of domination rather than consensus (Oliver, 1989, p.1). The language used to describe disability and disabled people will also influence responses.

As Clark and Marsh (2002) suggest: “The language that people use reflects what they think and can influence how they deal with situations. If they behave as if the problem is with the individual, they will take a different approach than if they regard the problem as being with the attitudes, systems and practices that create disabling barriers...” (p.1).

Disabled people have been clear about what disability is since 1975: “Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way which we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society” (UPIAS, 1976, p.14).

And we have been clear about what we wanted to be called and critical of anything else since the early 1990’s. For example, Oliver (1994) argued that “the vast majority of democratic organizations of disabled people want to be called exactly that; disabled people, not some name thought up by our critics” (p.5).

As Barnes (1992) explains: “Firstly, ‘people with disabilities’ assumes that disability is the property of the Individual and not of society. Here the terms ‘disabilities’ and ‘disability’ refer to a medical condition; and ‘person with a disability’ can easily be substituted by ‘person with cerebral palsy’ or ‘person with multiple sclerosis’ etc…

Secondly, by linking ‘disability’ to ‘impairment’ this phrase conveniently side steps the consequences of institutional discrimination against disabled people, poverty, dependence and social isolation, and, by implication, the need for change.

Thirdly, it is an explicit denial of a political or ‘disabled identity’. Since the emergence of the disability rights movement the word ‘disabled’ before ‘people’ or ‘person’ has come to signify identification with this collective identity. Phrases such as ‘people with disabilities’ undermine that identity” (p.21).

Barnes (1992) explains further, because these meanings individualise and medicalise the problems associated with living with impairment “...they ensure that disabled people are held responsible for any difficulties they encounter during the course of their daily lives” (p.21).

Oliver’s (1992b) comments are critical when he said: “Disabled people had chosen what they wanted to be called in the teeth of opposition from all kinds of vested interests and to keep calling us people with disabilities is to deny the reality of our experiences and the recent history of our struggles” (p.2).

And Oliver (1995) who argues “...to use other terminology is to deny authenticity to the collective voice of disabled people” (p.3). And Barnes (1991) who stated: “To begin to refer specifically to individually-based functional limitations as 'disability' at this stage would undermine what limited progress has already been made in establishing the latter as social restriction” (p.2)

I think it's very important to have an awareness of the consequences of the terms we use to describe disabled people during these precarious and worrying times when the government are basing entitlement on impairment and functional limitations. As Davis (1990) argued over two decades ago, “those who define the problem have ipso facto the key to controlling the solution” (p.8).

The solution could be the final solution; death!

Coupled with looming benefit cuts, the government and media representation of disabled people as scroungers that are a drain on society “the calls for a change to the law prohibiting assisted suicide have grown louder and more frequent” (Campbell, 2010). Again, the mass media have played some part in this, reinforcing the view of disability as an individual problem, portraying disabled people as dependent, a burden and our lives as not worth living.

In 1930’s Germany disabled people were “the first to go” Shaban (2007). In a similar fashion to the present time the mass media produced propaganda about disabled people, where sums were done on how much it would cost to feed a disabled person on a basic diet and how that would accrue over a lifetime.

In an article for BBC Ouch website Cook suggests: “Nazi propaganda in the form of posters, news-reels and cinema films portrayed disabled people as “useless eaters” and people who had “lives unworthy of living”. The propaganda stressed the high cost of supporting disabled people, and suggested that there was something unhealthy or even unnatural about society paying for this” (‘BBC Ouch’, 2008).

It is unavoidable, and of huge concern, that in the UK contemporary responses to disability are frequently not far from those expressed in Nazi propaganda .

Such propaganda led the way for Aktion-T4 in 1939, a programme combined with unstructured so-called “wild euthanasia” led to the mass-murder of a quarter of a million disabled people. It could be argued that this could never happen again, however as Crow (2009) has suggested; “T4 was an extreme event, but if you look at the values that underpin it, they feel very familiar" (unpaged)

Crow (2010) points out: “If you look at what happened then, it was incremental. Nobody woke up one day and said “Hey, let’s institute a programme of mass murder.” They started off with “These people cost a lot, this isn’t good, this doesn’t fit our ideal population”. Those little ideas kind of seeped in and grew, and kind of softened people up with it and when people were ready to accept it, they upped the ante a bit more, and it kept on building” (unpaged).

In Disability Now (2009) Linda Burnip argues: “Sadly, there are a lot of things going on today which in relation to disability are reminiscent of how the Holocaust began in Nazi Germany, not least the ghettoisation of disabled people in residential care, the promotion of social attitudes through adverts on buses about benefit fraud, the changes to Employment and Support Allowance etc. which give the impression of disabled people as a burden to society and nothing more than a lot of scroungers“ (unpaged).

Then it was ‘useless eaters’, ‘lives unworthy of life’ whereas today it is ‘a burden’, ‘dependent’, ‘scroungers’, ‘lives not worth living’. Then it was ‘mercy death’, ‘the right to death’ and ‘dying help’, today it is ‘mercy killing’, ‘dying with dignity’ and ‘assisted suicide’. Different words but similar values.

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