Person-First Language

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I was recently communicating with a special ed teacher (not on this board); we were talking about autism. I referred to people who have autism as "autistics". She immediately jumped on me and said I should use "person-first language", saying "people with autism" instead of "autistic people" or "autistics". She said this was because we should remember that people who have autism just have a problem rather than being a problem.

But I disagreed; because I think autism in general is a variation on the human brain, not a dysfunction. (I don't include mental retardation, seen in many autistics, in this definition; this would be a comorbid condition and not autism itself.)

When I say "I'm autistic" (I'm actually an Aspie, but technically I'm autistic too, because AS is on the spectrum), I mean it in the same way I mean "I'm a woman" or "I'm white". It's just part of who I am, not some sort of parasite.

When someone insists on referring to me as "a person with Asperger Syndrome", I just get annoyed; because it seems to imply--though I can't tell whether that's what they mean--that they pity me, patronize me, or think of me as someone who is ill or handicapped.

But AS isn't a handicap. I don't think typical autism, with speech delay and a normal IQ, is a handicap once you learn to communicate somehow. There are just so many things you get when you give up your social skills... Logical thought, amazing capability to learn, the joys of special interests.

Consider that there are deaf people forming a real culture from what is considered by most to be a handicap (and is it really a handicap, if you can do everything you would use hearing for with your hands and eyes?). With the advent of the Internet, socially awkward and noise/light/smell-sensitive autistics can do the same thing--and, I think, are.

But there's the issue: Do you refer to yourself as "autistic" or "an Aspie", because that's how you think of yourself and others on the spectrum?

Or do you use person-first language, because you know that people will think you are trying to be offensive if you do not?

I think we on the autistic spectrum should set the rules, not those who view it from the outside. That's why I get irritated at the puzzle ribbons and whatnot.

That said, I call myself an Aspie.

I am autistic. I have Asperger's. I also see it as neurological diversity.

I use both, but this is a widespread linquistic quirk.

"A person with diabetes" or "A diabetic"?
When the condition is the topic of conversation the former is shorter and more convenient, but yes, it is important to remember that the person is more than their condition.
It doesn't define them.

I say "I'm an Aspie" for the same reason you do. I treat it as an aspect of who I am that colors my strengths and weaknesses--that is, it influences both of it. I would use person-first language for my AS around the same time I used it for my feminity--to my way of thinking, they're both something I was born with, both something that's an integral part of me, but at the same time neither is something that defines me in any all-encompassing way. Moreover, I would treat someone who insisted on referring to me as "a person with AS" after I expressed my preference for being called an Aspie as insulting and condescending and would probably avoid that person as much as possible in the future. If someone cannot respect my right to decide what I am called, why would I deign to associate with them unless forced to?

Besides, I dislike lingustic encumberances. Person-first language has always struck me as catering more to the sensibilitiess of those who wish to seem politically correct or those in denial about the condition than it caters to the tastes of the people who actually have the condition. There isn't even any aesthetic appeal to "person with Asperger's Syndrom" or "person with autism"; they're both just unecessarily circuitous and annoying to try to say.

While I don't know about others, I find that human language is designed for an NT way of thinking in the first place, making it difficult to make use of it to express aspie thoughts. I suspect this is what causes non-verbal symptoms, as well as why other animals have trouble with human languages. Complete lack of a proper word for an aspie fit is an example of this problem. Given that I have no faith in the English language's ability to convey my way of thinking properly in the first place, I've come to view it as merely a way of one person expressing an idea to another.

When you say "black person", you're saying a person who is of African descent. I don't consider that any different from, say, the word "n****r", which is short for negro, the Spanish word for black, and is only considered a racial slur because slaveowners used it to describe their slaves. I also don't see a difference between words like "curious" and "nosy". Or "croaking" and "passing away". That isn't to say I'm dumb enough to use "n****r" in public, but that's only to avoid confrontations, not because I agree a word can have any evil power beyond what we grant it.

As another example, on World of Warcraft, one of the members of a guild my brother leads called one of the monsters they were fighting a "fa***t". A gay man in the group complained it was descrimination, and was so vocal about it my brother had to boot the gay guy from the guild to keep it from being torn apart. Thing is, the word fag originates from the idea that gays should be burned, just like a fa***t, so he was therefore only saying the monster should be burned. Any meaning beyond that comes from past usage, which is ultimately irrelevant to the function of the English language given that everything could theoretically be traced back to ooga ugga - and any time period established for "normal" speach is inherently arbitrary. The funny thing is that the whole complaint was based on the idea that the word had come to mean a gay person, even though it has once again come to imply dislike for someone or something, and therefore, both its origin and current definition have nothing to do with gays. Under that terminology, I would have to say that idiot is indeed a fa***t, regardless of his sexual orientation.

When it comes to the difference between "aspie" and "person with AS", to me, there is no difference. The world "disability" also referres to the completely neutral concept that a person has trouble functioning in a world not calibrated to them. I could not complete public school. I could not complete my driving lessons. I can't sleep at night and am always tired. I recently dropped out of college after only 1 complete course because I couldn't work fast enough for them. In another world, I might be at an advantage, but this is the real world, and here, I think I've earned the right to describe my problem as a disability.

I also agree that AS is a huge part of who I am, and 80% of me is defined by it. That's because it is a personality disorder, so it only makes sense to define myself as such. All my experiences in life, from friendships to discrimination to sunblock have been tainted by it in some way. Everything I do in life has to have it factored in. Many of my personality traits, including likes and dislikes, world opinions, etc, are extremely rare, if not outright impossible in NTs. I don't understand how AS can be something separate and detachable from who I am, because it IS me. You cannot remove it from me, you can only replace me with another person. In the same way, one cannot remove their humanity without changing who they are on a fundemental level.

At the same time, I also don't see why I'm surrendering individuality or letting others tell me who I am simply because there is a disorder that describes me so accurately. I'm built off a very different template from an NT, but that template isn't the whole of me. I saw other aspies in person for the first time some days ago and found for the first time I could actually have a conversation with someone without the constant awkward miscommunications that normally plague my speech - 'twas like switching to broadband. That's because we were all built off the same template, and had wide similarities because of it. At the same time, however, others there had very different opinions and traits from me - they had grown from that template in a completely different way.

I do want to stress that that deosn't mean I'm a bigot. I don't hate NTs. I also don't want to "clump" and spend all my time with only aspies. I just don't think it's healthy to deny there is some core difference on a cognative level between aspies and NTs. That's all.

Last edited by Kamex on 05 Nov 2006, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

I checked other, I guess I usually say autistic person or autistic or autie, but sometimes I say person with autism if that's the particular person's preference or if it flows better with the sentence. I find extreme emphasis on person-first language, particularly by people not members of the group being referred to, to be more than a little ridiculous.

With regard to intellectual disabilities, I don't consider them a defective form of brain either (no more than autism is), although I use person-first language more frequently (although not universally) with that because they're the one group of disabled people where I've seen an overwhelming tendency among people with the actual diagnosis to prefer that.

I use person-first because I'm a psyc major and if you write an essay and say 'an autistic person' instead of 'a person who suffers from autism' you get yelled at. Evidently one is 'more politically correct' than the other.

I checked no because I do not use "person first language" because I see that as making a deliberate effort to dissacociate the person with autism. On occassion I will write person with autism (or people with autism) but that is more about not being repetitive in writing not about the PC reasons that people first language seems to have been developed for. And I am on several online parent groups and they push for person first language and if anyone complains than I tell them why.

"Person who suffers from autism" is, of course, the Politically Correct phrasing. George Orwell referred to it as Newspeak. I personally find it doubleplusungood.

This says a lot about her perspective of autistics. "You just have a problem! I don't hate you, just your autism!"

I didn't know the difference until sometime 6-12 months ago, due to Amanda Baggs' site. I was rather ignorant of the autistic community and once I found it, everything seemed to make sense.
[url=www.gettingthetruthout.org[/url]

I can understand ignorance, but once a person (a professional no doubt!) comes into contact with the autistic community, there's no excuse to insist on the disease-oriented language.

I tend to vary back and forth and it really depends on the general sentence structure. I don't opt for politically correct answers, and more often than not, I'll say "an autistic person" because it is easier to say.

Interesting to note that I have never said "a person of colour" in reference to African (or African American) people. The colour of a person's skin or whatever conditions someone may have is not a disease. It is a part of who they are, for good, bad or neutral.

I find that saying 'A person with High Functioning Autism' feels like someone is saying, 'A car with ABS brakes'. If you look at it in a certain way, by saying 'A person with an attribute' is basically referring to their attribute as a separate part which can be either be disposed of or upgraded, rather than being apart of a person as they are and should be respected. Not everyone is going to share my opinion because they might see things in a different light, however I find it annoying that one term is more correct than the other when in truth both are correct.

So I proudly say I'm Autistic and refer to others as 'Autistic' because I recognize it's apart of them, not some extra part which is changeable. However I won't stop others from using the person-first language, as long as I'm not criticized for being incorrect in what I say.

So you can't comprehend the emotional connotation of a word? I don't think that's "an aspie thing" because I can and I have Asperger's syndrome and it isn't in the diagnostic manuals either. Like it or not, for most people, if words are consistently used in a specific context (such as a slaveowner disdainfully referring to his slaves), that context (in this case, the disdain) become attached to the word itself. I do know of one psychiatric disorder which shows a correlation with an inability to appreciate the emotional context of a word (or situation), but it is much more negative (yes, an emotional context!) than autism, so I won't mention it lest someone assume I am suggesting you might have it.

By the way, I don't have any problem with "autistic person" in comparison to "person with autism"; actually, I find "autistic person" less clumsy to say, and so I prefer it. Neither seems negative to me. "Person first wording" sounds nicer, but psycholinguistically, the last word in a sentence tends to be stressed more than other words (at least in English). Saying "autistic person" stresses person more than "person with autism" does, which actually ends up emphasizing autism.

It seems to me like Kamex understands the emotional connotation of a word; but that he understands it intellectually instead of intuitively like most people (NTs) do.

Anyway, that's the way it is with me. I have to be careful to speak accurately in connotative as well as denotative meaning; thankfully I have a big vocabulary and can usually pick the word with the right connotation. It's actually quite fun and challenging to get JUST the right word.

It does annoy me when people use a word just for its connotative meaning, though. For example, many realtors say they sell "homes". They are trying to attach an emotional meaning to their product that it may or may not eventually have to the buyer. This is inaccurate: They are selling "houses", and no more.

Words are fun, and problematic. Using language with precision is a craft
(Not always appreciated, as in superb cooking wasted on an uneducated palate).

Now, with "homes", yes, you are right . A house has the potential to become a home.
But now comes a variety of considerations: If that subliminal "home" message contributes to the sale, then there was communication. (Underhand, as it may be considered) Something extra was passed across.

And then the days of a dictionary being defining are long gone, if they ever existed.
If enough people use a word badly that becomes its new meaning, and it will in due course appear in the dictionary. "Gay" has moved at least twice, "nice" is rarely pedantically correct, and "peculiar" no longer means "individual", except in peculiar cases.

Language is fun. And a trap for the unwary.
Pity the poor teenager who appears to have only "cool" and wicked" in their repertoire.