8:43am September 3, 2012

About words and people with language impairments.

I know this is a wider trend, but when I see it happening in the autistic community it makes me go WTF.

So there’s a lot of people who go one step beyond analyzing the language we use. Analyzing the language we use is fine. I have no problem with it. Sometimes it’s important.

But then.

People come up with a wide variety of terms that Should Never Be Used.

And then they attempt to pressure everyone else to stop using them. And I don’t mean slurs, although sometimes these words will be misidentified as slurs. (Which… usually causes people to lose track of what a real slur is and does to people.) I just mean words that have been identified as wrong because of associations, connotations, inaccuracy, etc.

And then they try to pressure other people into not using them. Or they refuse to listen to anything someone says – if they used one of these words then they couldn’t possibly understand anything or have anything useful to say. Or tell people how, through a long and obscure chain of events, using these words might kill people, and thus are as bad or almost as bad as slurs directly attached to killing people. Or… otherwise enforce rules that these words are Bad and shouldn’t ever be used.

Meanwhile they come up with other words. New words entirely. Or obscure old words. Or new or obscure meanings to old words.

And they use these words throughout everything they write. Sometimes they are substitutes for old Bad words, in which case they’ll pressure others to use them. Other times they’ll just sprinkle them throughout their writing to the point where you pretty much have to understand these words to have a clue what they’re talking about. Even if there are plenty of simpler words.

And I just wonder.

Has anyone considered what that does to those many, many autistic people who have serious enough language problems that we can’t handle this?

People who can’t consistently filter through their written and spoken language to remove words. Including some people who can’t even remove “retarded” (the clinical term, not the insult or slur). Let alone “stupid” or person-first language.

People who can filter words out, wholly or partially, but can’t replace them with anything.

And we hear “It’s so easy to come up with other words.” No. It isn’t. It’s damn near impossible.

And “Here’s a list!” A list that I can’t memorize. A list that doesn’t mean the same thing at all. A list that has words in it I can’t understand or use.

And “People who say they can’t stop using these words, or can’t replace them, are lazy.” Thanks a fucking lot.

And statements that we are just making excuses to be total assholes and deserve nobody’s respect or understanding.

It took me years to replace mental retardation and MR with intellectual disability and ID. And I did that for much more reason than I will ever have to replace these scores of other words. I have better uses for such time and effort. Time and effort that may never be rewarded, mind you. It takes so much focus to use words at all.

And on to those obscure or invented words, and obscure or invented meanings for old words.

I will never tell everyone to quit using them. Because some people have to keep using them for the same reason some of us have to keep using stupid. And because sometimes there is no other word within reach but the new one for a concept someone is trying to describe. I’m sure I use some words like this myself.

But people should at least understand what this does to a lot of us.

My receptive language is far worse than expressive. It takes conscious effort to understand anything. Real, serious effort. So at best, many of these words are blank spaces. Which means when they are everywhere, or essential for understanding what you’re saying, I can’t understand you.

But it doesn’t stop there.

These words usually cause pain. Searing, electrical pain. At best. At worst, they cause silent explosions inside my head. It is horrible. Often, it is intolerable. And if it happens too much I will have to stop reading your writing.

Not that everyone can or should be able to read everyone’s writing. But it’s very unpleasant. To put it mildly. Too many of those explosions and I can no longer read at all. Or function. Sometimes they give me migraines that make everything impossible.

Which brings me to my other point. About replacing Bad words with these new or obscure words.

Not gonna happen for a lot of us.

I will never be able to replace transphobia with cissexism even if I wanted to. Never. Not in a million years. Even if they meant the same thing. Because cissexism causes a tiny explosion in my brain. Can’t do it. Will never do it.

I know, because every time I bring this up I am told so, that “language is important” and I can probably recite all the ways from memory. But in my view, people are important. And the way a lot of people treat this stuff is putting perfect language above people who have trouble with language. (Which also includes people for whom this is a foreign language.) Which is one of many reasons I can’t get behind this trend.

And why I am baffled that some people in the autistic community try to enforce perfect language on people with serious language impairments, while claiming that by doing this they are respecting those very same people.

Again. I don’t care that people analyze language. I don’t always see it as the most useful activity, but I don’t mind that it exists. I just care when people try to make other people use the same kind of language they have decided is proper. Or insist that those who can’t conform are doing something awful.

Notes: