A reporter at my university recently invited me to comment on ableist language for an article she was writing. A simple request, right? Nope! Disability is a highly charged label, one that indexes a diverse mosaic of communities, individuals, and experiences. Any discussion of this topic risks portraying that complexity with either too broad or too fine a brush-stroke. And the concerns raised and the responses offered will likely vary from person to person—disabled and abled.
I will leave it, then, to much wiser folks to discuss disability in terms of biomedical models and socio-political realities. As an applied linguist and discourse analyst, I approach ableism, disability, and other topics through the lens of language. In other words, I ask, “How are these issues also language issues?”
As a symbol of commitment to practical needs, the academic community needs to mobilize in order to ensure that “ableism” becomes as common an expression of “racism” and “sexism” both in the academy and in daily interchanges, including those in schools. One way to achieve this going would be to append to term “ableism” into dictionaries. For as Weise (2004) points out, “if ableist has been adopted by the disabled, and scholars in the field of disability studies, but it has not been adopted by dictionaries, what does this say about the public consciousness of the word ableist?” (p. 32).
Solis and Connor (2006, p. 115)
Q1. What is ableist language?
Simply put, the term ‘ableist language’ refers to a form of discrimination based on physical and mental difference. Our conversations are full of language that uses disability as a weapon to denigrate others and to express negative evaluations of the world around us. For example, we might say “Are you deaf or something?” to suggest that someone is clueless or “that’s so lame” to mean that something is boring or uninspired. Other obvious examples include retarded, crazy, mental, blind, crippled, and invalid (n.).
Often when people use such descriptions, they do so metaphorically or figuratively—even hyperbolically—not literally or with the intent to mock groups or individuals with physical and mental disabilities. Nevertheless, such language always has a critical or negative upshot. And to those whose bodies, minds, and experiences are reduced to insults and jokes, ableist language is yet another reminder of the social stigma and erasure they negotiate daily.
Ableist language has at least three features: First, it makes presumptions about what is physically and mentally “normal” and “good”—and conversely, what is “abnormal” and “bad.” Second, it treats (abled) people who fit those norms as superior and desirable. Third, it stigmatizes, ridicules, and erases (disabled) people who diverge from those norms.
Although the terms ‘ableism’ and ‘ableist language’ have only been around since the 1990s, discriminatory language and attitudes associated with various other ‘isms’ (racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, classism, etc.) have always been with us. Ableist language isn’t new, it’s just been called out and given a name.
We can trace contemporary critiques of ableism and ableist language to the rise of disability activism in the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent formation of disability studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Early discussions of disability tended to focus on biomedical and clinical models (pathology, impairment, therapy) and legislation (rights, protection): disability as problem. Later work, informed by feminist and critical scholarship, reclaimed the ‘disabled’ label and began to challenge the ways that society and culture define, represent, and shape perceptions of disability and ability.
Q2. What’s so bad about ableist language?
One way in which ableist language is harmful is that it creates an ‘abled-disabled’ binary, which carries negative associations that reinforce an ‘us-them’ and ‘normal-abnormal’ divide. This constructs disabled persons as the ‘other’ and disability as something to pity or fear.
Critical linguists and discourse analysts have long argued that language is never neutral and that it has a double-edged nature: it reflects our beliefs and ideologies while allowing us to reinforce and/or challenge them. We can also consider these matters in terms of the bi-directionality of language:
- Language is retrospective (i.e., backward-pointing). Words always carry their histories and contexts of use, which flavor them with various meanings and associations. Julia Kristeva coined this as ‘intertextuality.’ The word ‘retarded,’ for example, has a complicated history. Believe it or not, at one time it was used as a neutral replacement for other problematized words such as ‘feebleminded’ and ‘idiot.’ But as anyone who went through the US school system knows, it has since evolved into a widely used slur against neurodiverse individuals and common slang to mean ‘stupid.’
- Language is prospective (i.e., forward-pointing). Something language scholars have always recognized is that ideologies get made into ‘facts’ through repetition (just look closely at any advertisement or political speech). Each time we use ableist (or other) labels, even unwittingly, we are participating in that repetition and thereby normalizing their use. So, even if we don’t really mean that our ‘pyscho’ co-worker is mentally ill, we are nevertheless using the notion of mental difference as a means to criticize, mock, or complain—thereby reinforcing the presumption that mental and physical difference is bad.
Q3. There has been some pushback on social media regarding the use of words like “dumb” or “crazy” to describe people’s reactions to the coronavirus pandemic. What do you make of that?
I’ve noticed this with increasing frequency over the past few months, and there’s no shortage of examples:
Yes, people do use language in ways that are figurative and hyperbolic. A fascinating thing about language is that it’s flexible enough to accommodate multiple meanings. But language isn’t just a tool for communicating ideas, a simplistic view found in the old ‘transmission’ or ‘telementation’ models of language. Language is action—criticizing, defending, describing, directing attention, enforcing and challenging social norms, commenting on our inner and outer worlds, sharing emotions, creating and sustaining (or dissolving) interpersonal relationships, and so on. In the midst of the present coronavirus turmoil, if someone said, “This pandemic is insane,” few of us would assume that they mean COVID-19 is itself a mental illness. We’d understand that the speaker finds the pandemic shocking and disruptive to their world. What they’re really seeking, then, is someone to commiserate and empathize with them.
As I’ve noted, ableist language, like other forms of linguistic discrimination, doesn’t just stigmatize or other people. It normalizes and that stigmatization and othering—in effect, making it okay. But let’s say someone now reflects on ableist language and deletes ‘retarded’ and ‘insane’ from their daily vocabulary. Maybe they also resolve to avoid the casual use of medical labels such as “Don’t be so OCD about it” or “I’m a bit ADD today.” But what about words like ‘crazy’? We hear it all the time: “I’m crazy busy!” “I had the craziest day!” “These prices are crazy!” There’s even a TV series titled Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which depicts mental illness and its treatment.
So, when we have these discussions, it’s important to acknowledge that many terms criticized as ableist language are ambiguous. My colleague Patricia Friedrich wrote a powerful book about the linguistic construction of obsessive compulsive disorder. She writes, “Although ‘crazy’ is a label often conferred on and even at times welcomed by those experiencing some form of mental difference, it is hardly a medical term. The porosity between medical domains and the larger social milieu allows for linguistic forms to pass and morph between these realms, oftentimes unchecked.”
There are many other insidious ways that ableism permeates our everyday language, especially amidt the present COVID-19 pandemic. Consider, for example, all the people complaining about being required to stay at home or to wear a mask and social distance when they’re out in public. This ignores the fact that many disabled persons do not have the option to self-isolate. Even before COVID-19, being homebound, wearing masks, or carrying other medical and protective devices when going out was an everyday reality for many people with disability and chronic illness. As a recent online post commented:
“There’s also an inherent ableism—and, quite frankly, selfishness—in able-bodied people complaining about having to work from home or, even worse, going to work when they’re feeling sick.”
Caroline Reilly (bitchmedia.org)
For many people, all this criticism of ableism sounds like language policing, political correctness, virtue signalling, or just another symptom of contemporary ‘outrage culture.’ I get it. We don’t like others to tell us what what to do—especially what we should or shouldn’t say. Language is always bound up with morality, power, and politics. And challenging ableist language raises questions about who has the right to challenge and who deserves to be challenged. To criticize someone’s language choice is, in effect, to challenge their knowledge and moral character. When we tell someone that they shouldn’t use a word because it’s ableist, ageist, racist, etc., they hear it as “I’m better than you.” As Elizabeth Peterson (2019) points out in her book on language attitudes and ideologies, “To criticize someone’s language assumes a position of superiority and a right to judge that person. It is never just about language.” Because language is an intimate part of who we are (or at least, who we think we are and want to be seen), we take criticism of our language personally. How could we not?
Sociolinguist Deborah Cameron has a fascinating book titled Verbal Hygiene that addresses many of these thorny issues. She emphasizes that although language can be a powerful tool of violence and oppression, it is also a means of reflection, enabling what she refers to as metalinguistic reflexivity. When we critically reflect on ableist (and other) language ideologies and practices— and the surrounding tensions and contradictions—we momentarily disrupt them, thereby creating opportunities for discussion and transformation. Ultimately, this isn’t about asserting rules for how language ought to work; rather, it’s a matter of interrogating the social and political ideologies that shape and are shaped by the ways we use and respond to language. Greater awareness of the real and potential consequences of our language use is not simply an academic pursuit. A glance at recent headlines underscores the ways that language both unites and divides our social worlds.
Finally, I remain hopeful that these discussions and debates are productive, even if progress seems slow. Len Barton’s (2013) sums it up nicely in his edited volume, Disability, Politics and the Struggle for Change:
…hope reminds us of the importance of understanding the world in order to change it. It is based on a strong conviction that current conditions and relations are not natural, proper or eternal. They can be changed. Hope therefore, can mobilise, galvanise and inspire. It arises from within a social context characterized by unacceptable inequalities and discrimination.”
Prioritizations 