The Language of Language Disability

Abstract

It is ironic that in an era of enthusiasm for researching and facilitating social appropriateness in children's language use, we who conduct this research and intervention use and accept terms offensive to disabled people. The demeaning connotations of defective and deficient; the objectionable use of nouns that identify children rather than their language exlusively in terms of disability (e.g., "deviant language users"); and the irrelevant global negative judgment implicit in the use of normal as a contrast term are discussed. The paper suggests ways to avoid these biases and argues that to retain current uses of objectionable terms is to offend potential readers, to risk self-contradiction, and to face public embarrassment.