# "Disabled student" versus "student with disability"--is one superior? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 11, 2005, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111 "2005-09-11T16:49:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/21 "2005-09-11T18:24:54Z")
Sorry, that was the wrong Wikipedia quote: > [@](#): > > Most English compound nouns are noun phrases (= nominal phrases) that include a noun modified by adjectives or attributive nouns. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/22 "2005-09-11T18:31:52Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > A problem that I would anticipate with ‘disabled student’ is that the word ‘disabled’ is ambiguously either an adjective or part of a compound noun. The alternative avoids any such ambiguity, at the expense of brevity. Which is correct usage depends on the context - in formal writing, such as the OP’s case, I would always opt for clarity. In informal situations, it’s not such a concern. Actually in formal writing “student with a diability” would be used as that is how the law is currently written. When working on my master’s in special ed, I always found it interesting that it was “student with a disablity” without exception, but they are “special education students”. With the association of disabilities and special education, shouldn’t it be “student receiving special education”? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/23 "2005-09-11T18:35:04Z")
> [@La Llorona](#): > > And incidentally, I have never, ever heard of a good way of saying disabled/handicapped/differently abled, etc that won’t irritate/offend _somebody_. Of course, as some smartass will come along and say,“You can just call somebody with a disability John!” (or whatever), but what about the times when you would need to refer to disabled people as a group, as in “professors who work with the disabled”? Arghhhh. How about this: when in with general ed math teachers, I’m referred to as being special ed. No!!! I’m a special ed _teacher_. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/24 "2005-09-11T18:35:58Z")
Again, it varies from place to place - “student with special educational needs” (or ‘…with SEN’) is the British version. However, as with the non-English-speaking students, special needs are likely to be pertinent to all aspects of the child’s learning, whereas a disability could affect all, some or none of them. ---
**Author:** ![Driver8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5a626/32.png) [@Driver8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Driver8)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/25 "2005-09-11T19:32:20Z")
> [@rfgdxm](#): > > I happen to personally know multiple black people who are NOT Americans. They are African nationals who are resident aliens in the US. Thus black /= African-American. The problem with the term African-American is that it is traditionally used to describe black people who are American citizens. I myself am an African national living in the United States. I am also white. If I ever apply for citizenship, am I African-American? I don’t have a problem with this myself, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t what people are trying to say. From a clarity of language point of view, I’m far more comfortable with referring to people as black Americans or white Americans, assuming you need to talk about race at all. I still think there is a place for “\-American” if you are talking about the cultural heritage of a population group. “Polish-American”, “Russian-American” and “African-American” all make sense to me in this context. And in that case, I would be somewhat insulted if left out of the African-American category 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![jimpatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@jimpatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimpatro)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/26 "2005-09-11T19:38:19Z")
I worked for several years at a cable channel whose progamming was aimed at people with disabilities. New employees attended an orientation briefing which included dealing with those who fit into our target audience. It was conducted by a young man who uses a wheelchair. And according to him, he is not a “wheelchair user.” While some people with disabilities may not care what other people think or say, some do. Another example is my son who happens to have asthma. He is a young man. He is not “an asthmatic.” ---
**Author:** ![furlibusea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@furlibusea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furlibusea)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/27 "2005-09-11T20:15:58Z")
The funny thing is that whatever the current euphanism is, my students mostly refer to each other as the N word. It drives me nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/28 "2005-09-11T20:23:43Z")
> [@jimpatro](#): > > Another example is my son who happens to have asthma. He is a young man. He is not “an asthmatic.” Except that “an asthmatic” means “a person with asthma,” which your son is. You’re correct in saying that there is more to him as a person than that, and that’s worth insisting upon in some cases - although I think asthma is not one of those characteristics that might overwhelm a person’s character; I don’t worry that people will think I’m just “nearsighted” as opposed to “a person with retinal deficiencies resulting in nearsightedness” - but when the topic is asthma, I just don’t see how the word “asthmatic” is inappropriate. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/29 "2005-09-11T20:50:56Z")
[quote=Marley23] but **when the topic is asthma** , I just don’t see how the word “asthmatic” is inappropriate.\*\* You answer your own question. If somebody dislikes being labelled with an illness in such a way that does not separate the medical condition from their wider identity, then it is not the right phrase to use. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/30 "2005-09-11T21:08:03Z")
> [@smiling bandit](#): > > I would agree, though I hadn’t really thought about it. Its certainyl a very odd and linguistically unpleasant (for English-speakers) formation. > > I’ve always disliked the replacement of “black” with “African-American” The latter seems, if nothing else, very silly, like a word that got too big for it’s britches. “Black” is more or less descriptive, and probably more accurate than “African-American” as well. Not so much more accurate but more precise. I mean, Charlize Theron is an African-American too, as someone will doubtlessly point out any picosecond. ---
**Author:** ![liberty3701](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@liberty3701](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liberty3701)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/31 "2005-09-11T21:10:32Z")
I do research in the field of language and ethnicity, and these types of labeling problems come up all the time. It’s not just a matter of being PC, it’s a matter of being specific. Most of my research is on American Indian Englishes. I look at specific tribes, so I usually use the tribal name, but when talking about American Indians as a whole, I use the term American Indian because the American Indians I’ve met prefer to be called Indians above Native American, but you can’t just use just plain Indian because that’s confusing. Then there’s the problem of what to call the other people in my studies, the ones who are not American Indian. Sometimes I call them non-Indians since this is the term used by one of the groups I study. When I need to be more technical or specific (since another community is tri-ethnic, and the non-Indians are black and white), I use African American and European American. Unweildy, yes, but the best I can come up with. And don’t even get me started with Latino/Hispanic/Chicano/etc… IANA syntactician, but my instinct says that messing around with the word order (disabled student vs. student with a disability) doesn’t really change our perceptions of what the phrase means, vis a vis is it a person first or a disability first. Did that even make sense? I mean to say that messing around with the word order doesn’t seem to do what people claim it does. In other words, I think **LHoD** is right in saying that it only makes the disability stand out more. English isn’t a language where messing around with word order can make that big of a difference. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/32 "2005-09-11T21:35:25Z")
Hmm. I can see the prof’s point, but I don’t think it’s applied uniformly. Rather, I think this convention is common to disabilities rather than ethnicities or other aspects of an individual. I had a prof who insisted on using, for example, “person with retardation” instead of “retarded person”. His reason was that in the latter the condition is the defining part of the term. He felt that the word “person” should be the more important and defining part of the term. I agree. However, I can see how this convention seems to make less sense applied to a person of the say, Italian, Jewish, or Black persuasion. But the difference may be that people don’t generally MIND being identified as “an Italian” or “Italian person”. With disabilities it may be different. As a rule though, I think this convention is well applied when in doubt, as it ofen is with diabilities. Incidentally, I caught out that prof one time. In a fit of mock anger toward our class for sketchy performance on a test, he said something like, “A bunch of retarded monkeys could have done better!” I countered, “Excuse me, but don’t you mean ‘monkeys with retardation’?” ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/33 "2005-09-11T21:39:07Z")
> [@Mach Tuck](#): > > Incidentally, I caught out that prof one time. In a fit of mock anger toward our class for sketchy performance on a test, he said something like, “A bunch of retarded monkeys could have done better!” > > I countered, “Excuse me, but don’t you mean ‘monkeys with retardation’?” Beautiful. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/34 "2005-09-11T22:57:46Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Nope… > > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English\_compound](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound) My fault on the definition; however, I’ll point out that: 1. Most compound nouns consists of nouns modified by attribute nouns, such as the examples I gave; and 2. No dictionary I’ve looked in contains “disabled person” as a compound noun, making me highly skeptical that that’s what it is. It falls neatly into the category of noun modified by adjective, and it would look extremely peculiar to see the phrase without a space between the two words; I do not think you’re correct in calling it a compound noun. > [@](#): > > You recognise that context is crucial. However, ‘disabled student’ tells you _nothing_ about any specific needs, and is therefore utterly useless by itself in your scenario. (And FWIW, the British terminology for the language situation is “…with English as an additional language”, or “… with EAL”.) First, it’s NOT totally useless, since in the context I mentioned I was discussing someone’s attitudes toward the disabled. A person may be generally uncomfortable around disabled folks, or generally comfortable around folks with disabilities; as such, it’s helpful to discuss that as such instead of discussing different disabilities. Second, if the phrase is utterly useless, then the suggested alternative–students with disabilities–is exactly as useless. Third, “English as an additional language” is awful. It sounds as if the person you’re discussing is fluent in English and another language, but generally the phrase is used precisely when the subject is not fluent in English. When I think about it, English Language Learner is actually a better phrase than English as a Second Language, because it gets at that difficulty with English as well as one of the useful goals in teaching that student. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/35 "2005-09-11T23:11:12Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > My fault on the definition; however, I’ll point out that: and 3) from your link: > [@](#): > > Sound patterns > A black board is any board that is black, and equal prosodic stress can be found on both elements (or, according to psycholinguist Steven Pinker, the second one is accented more heavily.) A blackboard, the compound, may have started out as any other black board, but now is a thing that is constructed in a particular way, of a particular material and serves a particular purpose; the word is clearly accented on the first syllable. > > Sound patterns, such as stresses placed on particular syllables, may indicate whether the word group is a compound or whether it is an adjective-±noun phrase. A compound usually has a falling intonation: “bláckboard,” the “Whíte House”, as opposed to the phrases “bláck bóárd”. (Note that this rule does not apply in all contexts. For example, the stress pattern “whíte house” would be expected for the compound, which happens to be a proper name, but it is also found in the emphatic negation “No, not the black house; the white house!” “Disabled Person” doesn’t have a falling intonation, any more than “young person,” “purple person,” or “elated person” has. (Note that the last example has the same syllabic stress as “disabled person”; it’s hard to claim that elated person is a compound noun.) Daniel ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2005, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/36 "2005-09-11T23:17:23Z")
> [@](#): > > No dictionary I’ve looked in contains “disabled person” as a compound noun, making me highly skeptical that that’s what it is. It falls neatly into the category of noun modified by adjective, and it would look extremely peculiar to see the phrase without a space between the two words; I do not think you’re correct in calling it a compound noun. My original point was that is was ambiguous, with the potential to be perceived as an (unwelcome) compound. And compound nouns don’t have to lose the space between the words (‘space bar’, ‘tyre pressure’, ‘space shuttle’…) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2005, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111/37 "2005-09-12T01:34:11Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > My original point was that is was ambiguous, with the potential to be perceived as an (unwelcome) compound. And compound nouns don’t have to lose the space between the words (‘space bar’, ‘tyre pressure’, ‘space shuttle’…) Agreed with the second point, but not the first. That’s simply not a compound noun; and if it were, it would have no meaning greater than the alternative. Daniel [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disabled-student-versus-student-with-disability-is-one-superior/321111.md?page=1)