language, disability, and power

How power is evident in talk interests me. As the authors point out in Chapter 9, defining terms is one way to exercise power. My research in communication and disability has focused on disability as a contested term. In a chapter for Communication Yearbook 27, I identified six metaphors of disability, discussing the ways each metaphor empowered/oppressed persons with disabilities.

Disability as a medical problem suggests persons with disabilities must be repaired. This metaphor disempowers persons with disabilities, although more recent conceptualizations may provide useful tools for empowerment. For example, empowerment medicine suggests that individuals can act on and change their physical, political, societal, and economic environments. Disability as cognition focuses on the influence of attitudes toward disability or individual differences in personality traits that influence disabled-nondisabled interaction, moving away from objective notions of disability to subjective ones. This metaphor provides some avenues for empowerment in recognizing attitudes of prejudice and stereotyping that contribute to the oppression of persons with disabilities. However, the metaphor oppresses persons with disabilities in that those without disabilities are defined as the norm; persons with disabilities are Other or abnormal.

Disability in culture examines the influence of culture on what constitutes disability, highlighting the ways that cultural definitions oppress and disempower persons with disabilities. To the extent that persons with disabilities participate in communication concerning disability, disabled persons influence the language (and images) used in empowering ways. To the extent that persons with disabilities remain excluded from those discussions and defined as not fully human, then persons with disabilities will face continued oppression. Disability as culture views persons with disability forming distinct cultures/co-cultures, underscoring the empowering potential of disability as a cultural identity. Further, recognizing disabled-nondisabled interactions as intercultural communication underscores the ways in which persons without disabilities stereotype, discriminate against, and disempower persons with disabilities. However, oppression may manifest itself in the subordination and rejection of disability culture and co-culture.

Disability as politics recognizes the importance of empowering relationships in public and private interactions. The transformation of disability identity from dependent, stigmatized, and abnormal to independent, accepted, and normal constitutes the metaphor's foundation. Recognizing disability as a political and social label provides a critique of the dominant "ableist" perspective on what defines humanness and personhood. Thus, disability as politics strikes at the core of disability oppression and brings with it the power to construct one's identity.

Finally, disability as community incorporates several perspectives to provide a more complex view of disability and communication. This metaphor of disability, particularly with its focus on new communication technologies, most clearly demonstrates empowerment strategies that provide an avenue for persons with disabilities to fully participate in the social construction of their life experiences. For example, the metaphor removes the static notion of a uniform disability culture and proposes multiple co-cultures found among diverse group members who share some things in common and yet in other ways are distinctly different.

If you're interested in reading the article, the full citation is:
Coopman, S. J. (2003). Communicating disability: Metaphors of oppression, metaphors of empowerment. In P. J. Kalbfleisch (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 27 (pp. 337-394). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

~ Professor Cyborg