INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE AND DISABILITY (SNOW E-journal )

by onyii udegbe

This is article addresses the importance and relevance of language to students living with a disability and their caregivers, parents and educators. It attempts to explore the implications of language that is oppressive to people living with disabilities in homes and classrooms today.

The Canadian society is one that presently understands and promotes itself as progressive and diverse. Language is publicly understood as an important medium through which the expression of these generally widely accepted sentiments of progression and diversity are understood. The Canadian public is one that prides itself on its acceptance of difference and in turn rightfully speaks of itself as a multicultural society.

In public spaces including the classroom, it is considered inappropriate and understandably offensive to use explicitly racist or sexist language. In the case of explicitly ableist language this is not the reality for students who may happen to be living with a disability. The reality is that, ableist language that reinforces the difference and oppression of people, such as students’, living with a disability, is very present and commonplace.

An example of ableist language and ways of referring to people living with a disability; include language that centralizes their disability or difference. They include blank and general statements like “the blind” as opposed to visual impairment or “the person in a wheelchair” versus someone who uses a wheelchair. Ableist language does not centralize the person, their other identities and emphasizes disability as the identity, as in “the blind”[1]. This type of ableist language is oppressive, offensive and demeaning. Ableist language is a reflective expression of the public and widely accepted attitudes, and a way of speaking and referring to people including students living with a disability.

Inclusive and appropriate language is of utmost importance and its significance is to be fully appreciated and not underestimated. For caregivers, parents and educators of people living with disabilities it is imperative that the power of language and its implications are acknowledged and understood.

It is necessary to understand the importance and significance of language so as not to reinforce ableist and oppressive attitudes for and within a student through their education and learning. This is likely to happen within the home or in classrooms today. For, if care is not taken, students who are living with a disability will adopt reinforced ableist attitudes and ways of being from their parents and educators. This has been true for my formal educational and learning experience.

Also, in an attempt to educate themselves, parents and educators must not vacate their positions as parents and educators and expect a student living with a disability to educate them about the impact of ableist language in the classroom or in the home. This is the responsibility of an educator and parent and not that of the student living with a disability. It is also just as important to acknowledge what is different about someone or a student living with a disability, not to do so is a denial of who the person or student is.

I only recently found out the official medical term for my disability at the age of 18. I remember growing up as a child and not having language to describe who I was, what my body was or how I was different. The knowledge and use of inclusive and appropriate language may have facilitated the affirmation and centering of my body and my experience as normal within my context and lived reality. I could not speak of any other young girl my age living with a disability, nor was I offered any other context besides living without a disability. This placed me in a precarious mental and often physical environment of feeling and living like a fish out of water, out of context, out of center[2]. I in turn, fully internalized the unspoken expectations along side my absent context of performing as one who in fact was not living with a disability. I often acted and understood myself as living without a disability.

Living with a denied disability and out of center, repeatedly reinforced and centered, life without a disability (as normal and central) until it was completely internalized. Thus erasing my difference and disability, leaving me no room to be who I am or to understand who that is and what it might mean for me. And as a result, there was no chance for me to begin to identify with, speak to or speak from and understand this reality of living with a disability.

This is the struggle that I find myself in. I am a woman living with a disability in an able bodied head, with able-bodied thoughts, language and values. I suffer from persistent internalized ableism. Even though I so obviously have a disability I have judged myself and adopted values reflective of people living without disabilities[3].

I remember when I was about 10 - 13 years old there was a game, joke, song and dance about a cranky old man who had suffered from polio and as a result had a different walk, different from the other elders of the village. Him and his walk became standing comical caricatures. When he became aware that he was being mimicked, he reacted with outbursts of “is it because I don’t have legs?” as he walked by the children providing lyrics for the song. Now he had legs mind you but because of the polio they were different and he understood them as now no longer legs.

So in my kitchen with loved ones, family and friends I joined the song and dance and made sure that I could laugh as loud, dance as low and cajole as much as the next person as I understood that I must not, could not, was not expected to be that old man with his obviously funny legs and crabby attitude. At 13, I was not self identifying as living with disability, I was not acknowledging who I am, I was not even willing to honour and sit powerfully as who I was. My basic understanding was that there was not and could not be anything powerful about disability.

I understood living with a disability as angry, pitiful, comical, uncool, unsexy, powerless and downright unattractive. That was not me, could not be me and most definitely not who I wanted to be or even ally, sympathize and identify with.

In naming my experience, allowing myself space and time to see who I am, speak to who I am as not outside of the norm and as center I find strength, endless possibilities and joy at the prospect of holding, sitting in and loving powerfully the prospect of living my life from and in every realm, layer and sphere as center and simply different. This means a life redefined, a life found, a life reborn.

If through the awareness of inclusive and non-ableist language children living with disability are encouraged in their education and by their caregivers, parents and educators alike, to centralize their truths, their realities and their experiences in their understanding of how the world works and their respective locations within this world, it will inevitably contribute to the formation of a solid self worth, perception and esteem.

In order to encourage and facilitate this process in children and students, caregivers must first be willing to understand how it is that they understand the centrality of their own experiences as normal and not simply different. Caregivers must understand their experiences without a disability as privileged and assure that this privilege is not reinforced through their communication including their everyday and not so everyday interactions with people living with disabilities.

Listed below are some web-based resources for caregivers, parents and educators in search for more information that will facilitate a process of learning and understanding related to the issue of disability.

INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE USES AND EXAMPLES:

The power of language and people first language: http://www.disabilityisnatural.com/peoplefirstlanguage.htm

Language guide: Terminology to avoid and the importance of words:
http://www.specialolympics.org/Special+Olympics+Public+Website/
English/Press_Room/Language_Guide/default.htm

Disability language and etiquette:

http://www.enc.org/features/focus/archive/special/

document.shtm?input=FOC-003188-index

Uses of Language UTS: Equity and diversity Unit

http://www.equity.uts.edu.au/resources/language.html

Disability related literature and organizations.

The BC coalition of people with disabilities

http://www.bccpd.bc.ca/

Council of Canadians with a disability

http://www.ccdonline.ca/

The National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt)

http://nccrest.edreform.net/portal/nccrest/school/disabilityspecialeducation

Disability advocates of minorities organization (United States of America)

http://www.sfdamo.freeservers.com/index.html

darkdaughta.com: challenging ableism

http://darkdaughta.com/challengingableism.html

mouth Magazine: disability magazine

http://www.mouthmag.com/abtmouthmag.htm

ragged edge: disability magazine

http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/

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[1] For more on this topic see “people first language” listed in the web-based resources

[2] The theory of center and normal and the relevance of out of center and normal and the relevance of out of center and in denial, to my life was offered to me by creatrix, rogue scholar and organizer in community T.J Bryan aka Tenacious an able-bodied ally who approached me with conversation as part of my attempting to decentralize and disrupt the social positioning of her [constructed as] able body see darkdaughta.com

[3] this information and recollection about my experiences as a child living with a disability came forth in a conversation that I had with T.J Bryan aka Tenacious where she dared to go where no one else would with me. To question and challenge me about my self perception and the ways that I choose to move through this world. She willing offered her insight, experience, energy and compassion to a struggle for my well being in which she had to drag me into. For this I am most inspired and grateful. For more on T.J Bryan aka tenacious rogue scholar, writer, and creatrix see darkdaughta.com .