Over the years both the common and legal language used to describe disability and disabled people has changed.
Many terms which were acceptable thirty years ago are now felt to be offensive, derogatory and discriminatory.
Some of the changes in language and terminology might occasionally seem like the politically correct sanitising of common speech, but in most cases the changes have been based on a wide and generally well thought-out consensus that their use was deliberately discriminatory and served to perpetuate negative stereotypes of disabled people.
However, in order to record history factually and also in the interest of understanding the context of particular past eras, the history blog will stay true to original texts and to the spoken and written words of contributors.
Indeed, a theme of the history project is to record how and why language has changed so, where relevant, we will try to add clarification of the historical context in which particular words or phrases were used and when and why they became obsolete.
Many terms which were acceptable thirty years ago are now felt to be offensive, derogatory and discriminatory.
Some of the changes in language and terminology might occasionally seem like the politically correct sanitising of common speech, but in most cases the changes have been based on a wide and generally well thought-out consensus that their use was deliberately discriminatory and served to perpetuate negative stereotypes of disabled people.
However, in order to record history factually and also in the interest of understanding the context of particular past eras, the history blog will stay true to original texts and to the spoken and written words of contributors.
Indeed, a theme of the history project is to record how and why language has changed so, where relevant, we will try to add clarification of the historical context in which particular words or phrases were used and when and why they became obsolete.
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