Sorry, that was the wrong Wikipedia quote:
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”? 
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.
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.
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 “<country/continent>-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 
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.”
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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’?”
Beautiful.
My fault on the definition; however, I’ll point out that:
- Most compound nouns consists of nouns modified by attribute nouns, such as the examples I gave; and
- 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.
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
and 3) from your link:
“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
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