Within Disability Studies, language is an oft-explored topic, commonly centered around shifting common phrases regarding disabled people towards more disability-positive language. Less common are studies of the material impact of language and discourse, especially as they affect public policy. In this issue we have three articles that examine this interplay between the cultural and the material.

First, despite the fact that most, if not all, of the Nordic countries have passed resolutions affirming access to signed language as a right for Deaf peoples, Hilde Haualand et al. examine the impact of mainstreaming and oral-focused education on school-age Deaf children. They argue that despite these outwardly affirmative-seeming policies, the Deaf child population is increasingly reduced in the number of opportunities to engage with others in their respective signed languages.

In a similar vein, Eunyoung Jung examines the intersecting discourses surrounding vagrancy (burangin) and disability in modern South Korea. The article reveals the role these discourses played in the nation's harsh institutionalization practices and policies in the late twentieth century.

Likewise, Daniel Wojahn, Stina Ericsson, and Per-Olof Hedvall track trends in disability-related language within Swedish media, noting an increase in recent years of more disability-affirmative language. Although governments and society have encouraged these linguistic shifts, the article demonstrates how these linguistic shifts have done little to change the underlying attitudes that the new terminologies seek to dismantle.

Finally, Megh Marathe notes a wide variance in the diagnosis of epilepsy among those with this condition. According to them, this variance is attributable to a confluence of social and technological factors inhibiting the attainment of a diagnosis. Consequently, the article proposes the development of a concept of "differential pace" to account for intersectional influences on the construction of episodic disability.

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