Associated Press Says “Mentally Retarded” Is Outdated Term
The latest update of the Associated Press Stylebook says, no more using “mentally retarded” (”mentally disabled” is preferred). Notes Gawker:
Journo-nerds rejoice: the AP Stylebook has been updated! It’s the Bible of all that is considered acceptable in middle American newsrooms, and, like middle America itself, is consistently several years behind the times.
Make that at least several years behind………
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20 opinions for Associated Press Says “Mentally Retarded” Is Outdated Term
navi
Jun 30, 2008 at 2:00 pm
um… but isn’t ‘mentally retarded’ still used clinically for those that are ‘mentally retarded’? or maybe it’s not cognitively retarded? I know some places refer to Tristan’s language as retarded. ie - not functional, therefore functionally ‘retarded’… But then, this is the press we’re talking about, and they tend to use blanket terms, and it’s not really appropriate as a blanket term…
navi
Jun 30, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I meant maybe it’s cognitively retarded, not it’s not…
Regan
Jun 30, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Well, that’s the AP stylebook.
I wonder if we fast forwarded 10 years whether there would be a change in the APA stylebook?
I think it’s backwards and almost prefer retention of retarded, which is a verb, as in retarding the gas on the carburator, vs. the global “mental”, which seems a blunt, and subjectively interpreted, cut.
But being “almost”, if I had my druthers, I might retain the childhood term “delayed”, because it specifies that a delayed trajectory, but implies a potentiality of change.
Regan
Jun 30, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I realize that one thing that might be accomplished is that folks would stop referring others to the pejorative noun if mentally retarded is used less in a general sense.
Still mulling over the substitution though.
Regan
Jun 30, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Sorry about the typos–time for coffee.
Synesthesia
Jun 30, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Oh, good. I’ve never liked the word “retarded” anyway. OSC used it in a recent article much to my dismay along with “crippled.” For some reason those words bug me. PCness can be annoying, but sometimes it’s so much politer.
socal
Jun 30, 2008 at 3:25 pm
The Los Angeles Unified School District (US second largest, iirc) uses this term (some say) liberally and the district can attach it to a student who is two grade levels behind for more than two years. They also claim they cannot ever delete anything they enter into Welligent. So, a student in LAUSD who gets this label, even say once, actually gets it for life.
Sarah
Jun 30, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I recall someone at Autreat bringing up the point that even though people insist on changing the language, the same old stigma remains.
Synesthesia
Jun 30, 2008 at 4:47 pm
So true. There has to be a way to challenge that.
laurentius-rex
Jun 30, 2008 at 5:42 pm
In UK legal speak whatever they want to call it we are all hamstrung by legalistic phraseology that neither reflects current neuroscience or psychological theory and that is what denies me from a higher rate of disability allowance cos it refers to an arrested state of development in the brain, which actually concurs with bugger all theory but arises out of nineteenth century jursiprudence and the two will never meet. Well you see I am not a post modernist for nothing.
arrested of course concetually, semiotically and linguistically goes further than retarded, but then you bin lost without them greco roman cognates, what say they in Sanskrit, what say they in Aymara, well Euskadi notwithstanding or Ewe both of which I know nothing of but there cadences. (the music of the language rather than it semiotics)
It is a notion borne out of a conception of time and I do not think it would work in Aymara which puts the future behind in proprioceptive metaphor.
Larry
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 30, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Have still heard “retard” and “tard” and “retarded” thrown around. I guess one wouldn’t talk about being “physically retarded”—-?—-”delayed” (or just has not athletic ability) would be the phrases.
stela
Jun 30, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Wow, this is a subject close to my heart. My son has an intellectual disability, which is the term we use in New Zealand. While some aspects of living with a disability in NZ are apparently years behind other countries, language isn’t one of them.
These days ‘retarded’ is considered a swear word and a rude one at that. When I was growing up in the 80’s in NZ we used it (not proud) to insult another kid. These days if a teacher heard a student call another student a retard or retarded it would get the same treatment as someone using the ‘N’ word.
It evolved quite quickly from mentally retarded to mentally handicapped to intellectually handicapped to someone with an intellectual disability. The last change is from the idea that you look at the person first, and their disability second. This is also the case with ’someone with a physical disability’.
I’m not saying everyone gets it, there are still people who come up to me when I’m with my son and ask what’s WRONG with him. Mostly people just know what they are not supposed to say, and try to hit on a specific syndrome they might have heard of “Does he have ….Downs Syndrome?”
The changes came about, I guess, from a group of individuals committed to making the world less ‘Us and Them”. And I applaud that.
Melody
Jun 30, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I don’t really care what words are used, as long as the stigma attached becomes ameliorated by a more accepting society. But even though I believe it’s the way you use words more than the words themselves that matters, if someone got offended and asked me to change my terminology I’d be happy to oblige them.
laurentius-rex
Jul 1, 2008 at 7:29 am
Backward was a term much in use in my youth, retarded comes into our language from the French En Retard, to be late, or retarder, to delay. One can retard the mechanism of a clock to stop it from being fast for instance.
It is the semiotics, that is to say the nuances of the words that is the problem, not there inherent meaning.
Retarded in a techical sense is better than backward, because it implys delayed rather than reverse development, but then there is a whole semiotics of disability language with similar connotations, behinderte for instance, cognate in English with hindered, but means disabled in German, hindered refers to hindmost or rear parts, arse backwards again.
It is interesting about Aymara that time is concieved of by a different ordering of the body metaphor, where the past is in front, because it can be surveyed, the future behind because it is unseen and unknown.
These body metaphors are fascinating if you read up on the motor theory of language, and embodied cognition.
Delayed is not better than retarded, it means precicely the same, it is just a term that is awaiting the negative connotations in popular language of its cognate. Unfortunately it not the words themselves but the users who dictate what they connote in popular culture.
That is why I thing we need culturally to hang on to autistic, as the term may slip from language to mean something else as is already happening, it is on it’s way to becoming a term of abuse and person with autism will not save it from that, only our pride will.
mayfly
Jul 1, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Words are given meaning through their usage. In autism the term low-functioning refers to autistics with an IQ of less than 70. This is also a definition of mental retardation.
I much prefer the first term. Children call someone a “retard” to say “He’s not worthy”. Adults may think along the same lines even if they do not voice it. Clinically speaking my daughter is mentally retarded. However, if I her someone describe her as such, my thought is “She’s just as worthy as you! No, more so!” If someone says that she is low-functioning, that visceral reaction does not surface.
I suppose this could end if kids start teasing some one as being LF or LoFu.
Teasing is not limited to those of average or greater “intelligence”. A father of young man with Down’s related to mehow his son wanted out of a class because there were too many ret… there.
Regan
Jul 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I disagree with “low functioning” as a suitable substitute as I think it carries some baggage of its own.
When Eleanor was 2 1/2, less than 3 years old, a potential therapist who people seemed to widely respect walked in and pointed at Eleanor and announced her as “low functioning”. I was pretty new to all this at the time, but even I could feel the level of expectation drain from the room. Since I have heard “LF” paired with all kinds of antecedent expectations, almost none of which were either true or of long-standing with Eleanor, I have not found the term useful.
Is her measured IQ<70? Yes it is. Is she “low functioning?”. I think it very much depends on the specifics of what is being demanded. I prefer specifics to global definitions, since the specifics, especially in teaching, have been the only ones that have mattered.
mayfly
Jul 1, 2008 at 7:01 pm
@Regan. I understand your concern. There is a permanence to the label “low functioning” which is not there in “delayed” or
even “retarded”.
Low-functioning does not mean non-functioning. It does not mean a child is incapable of learning. It does mean the chances of living help with life skills is significantly less than children without the label.
The progress is slower, may stall, and regression may occur at any time.
The term does deal with generalities. It does not mean that a child will not master a life skill which defies the classification.
Ari
Jul 2, 2008 at 1:24 pm
My understanding is that the new term is “intellectual disability” rather than “mental retardation”.
laurentius-rex
Jul 2, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Intellectual disability would be in terms of the social model an inappropriate term, in that context the correct one would be intellectual impairment. The disability would be the cognitive overload that is put upon the “average” population today which were not expected in an agrarian society.
In fact if you look at the flyn effect, you could surmise that yesterday’s genius, was within todays average score and that practically everyone alive when IQ tests were introduced would score in the retarded range today, so it is all subjective, our technological societies have set the goals higher for normality and passing.
Now since evolution does not progress that fast you have to suppose that something else is happening, the population is not actually getting smarter, there is just unequal access to learning.
Flynn is worth reading anyway, though I don’t think he is entirely correct, he is certainly better than the Burts, the Eyesencks and the Jensens and Hernnsteins.
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