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Post by Stan and Harry's Dad on Sept 6, 2004 7:35:35 GMT -5
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Post by victday on Sept 6, 2004 15:49:21 GMT -5
Interesting reading...
Now, not commenting on all subjects touched upon in the article but simply upon the proliferate use of the word "retard" or "retarded" in the common vernacular:
As those words are falling out of correct technical usage (being replaced with "developmentally disabled" or other substitutes) it struck me that perhaps the words are moving into the realm currently occupied by "idiot" "moronic" etc. Haven't many of us said, "Geez, I can't believe I did that - I feel like such an idiot!" Normally this doesn't get anyone's radar up; it's not perceived as being an insult toward the disabled, although once the word was a technical description of the same. I believe that once a given word is deleted from acceptable medical vocabulary, it migrates into slang. That is why young people, when confronted with their usage of the word and asked to consider the disabled, will gasp, "But I never thought of [the disabled] as retarded!" In their lifetimes, the word has become slang only and they don't think of it as a term used in serious description of clinical conditions, the same way I grew up not knowing that "idiot" had ever been an acceptable medical term.
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