However, some interesting points came up. The general consensus among the interviewees was that it didn’t matter much either way - person or diagnosis-first language. A co-Fellow sent me an interview of people on the Autism Spectrum. But recently I was made to realise it’s not that black-and-white. I always thought it was the politically correct way of referring to PwDs. That means not saying ‘Autistic Person’ but rather ‘Person with Autism’. Diagnosis-First Language: Personally, I always use person-first language. But if there’s no disadvantage - just a different advantage - what’s there to work towards? Actively working towards inclusion requires the advantaged group to acknowledge that another group is at a disadvantage. The by-product as always is that it becomes more comfortable for abled people to forget to actively work towards inclusion. This phrase doesn’t do justice to a group that faces not just different but additional challenges to their daily basic functioning.
Differently Abled: Empty of any meaning.It allows abled people to use semantic gymnastics to dodge acknowledging our privilege - “We’re not discussing if I’m at an advantage. It indicates a discomfort among abled persons in acknowledging our privilege. Saying someone has ‘special needs’ makes sense but to say someone is ‘special’ seems to skirt the real issue. But I believe some other terms in the disability dictionary are diluted to the point of no longer conveying the gravitas of living in a world where everything is stacked against you. That is political correctness, not euphemism. Thus, it gives due respect to the subject being spoken about and is not solely for the comfort of the speaker. This takes into account that ‘retarded’ has over the years acquired pejorative connotations. ‘cognitive impairment’ has come to replace ‘mental retardation’. Let’s take the disabilities’ space where i work as a fellow as an example. By the time you finish saying the words and gather what they mean, you’ve missed their urgency, their gravitas.
We started off with 2 syllables that pack a punch and ended up with 8 syllables and a hyphen. US-Vietnam war and onwards, we know this condition as ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’.Some 7 years later, during the US-Korea War, troops were warned they might experience ‘Operational Exhaustion’.30 years later, when soldiers came back from WWII, the same condition was called ‘Battle Fatigue’.
That PC culture also tries to make unsavoury things more palatable. Some may argue that ‘political correctness’ (PC) is a euphemism for ‘euphemisms’. This is its function - if a euphemism feels comfortable, it’s doing its job. The most significant impact of euphemisms is that they soften the blow of unsavoury concepts, making them seem less grave, less urgent, robbing them of gravitas. A ‘euphemism’ is a word or phrase intended to make something uncomfortable sound more palatable.