Disablised or Ablised?: Linguistic Categorisations of Dis/ability in Swedish Print Media Over Time

Abstract

Which linguistic labels we use to name ourselves and others – such as disabled and non-disabled – make a difference regarding how we see ourselves and each other. Such labels may also say something about how we view society and the roles of people in it, as illustrated by the choice between people-first and identity-first labels. In the present study, we use a sample of 56,666 articles published by Swedish print media to investigate how the concept and category of dis/ability is referred to and understood in Swedish. The data stretches over four decades, from 1982 to 2019, and is analysed using the two research fields of Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Studies. The study shows that the overall terms to name dis/ability and disablised people in Swedish have changed regularly, while the underlying concepts, structures and ways of categorisation regarding dis/ability remain the same. Dis/ability is shown to be understood along a medical-biological model as located in the individual. Ability is rarely mentioned. These results suggest that any attempts at changing mainstream society's conceptualisations of dis/ability need to involve more work than just replacing outdated or offensive words by new ones. The results also suggest a need for making tacit ableist norms explicit if they are to be challenged.