When disability charity Scope announced in 2013 that it would be closing many of its residential care homes, the wording of the announcement was optimistic and empowering: this decision was being taken to “support” people’s “independent living”, to “raise expectations” and match disabled people’s “aspirations”, reinforcing “choice and control”.
Compare this with a stark advertisement from the 1970s, when Scope was known as the National Spastics Society. A young girl is pictured with two crutches to help her walk and three bold words: “Please Help Spastics”. Each word tells a story of a different era – the first begs, the second evokes pity and the third is now a term of offence.
Forty years apart though these examples may be, they nevertheless reflect wider changes in the way that the charity sector speaks. There is a growing consciousness of the effect of language both on external perceptions and on beneficiaries themselves.
A key example would be charities that work in the field of domestic violence. For instance, the word ‘victim’ – originally used to refer to an animal killed in sacrifice to a deity – has been phased out in favour of ‘survivor’. One charity we work with told me how it is encouraging its staff to prefer the term ‘abuse’ over ‘violence’ as more women identified with this term, helping to overcome the common problem of survivors feeling that what they suffer is not sufficiently serious to warrant support.
This sensitivity brings difficulties too. There are organisations in the same field running programmes to educate and rehabilitate those who have committed domestic abuse and they come up against a hurdle: what do you call such a programme? A men’s programme? But not all abusers are men, and more importantly some survivors are men and could be alienated by being identified with this group. A perpetrator programme? But the project is intended to be non-judgmental and conciliatory rather than reinforcing the dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people.
Such a dilemma is clearly not trivial for an organisation in a field which evokes such strong emotion, and it goes beyond the loaded concept of political correctness. The important consideration is that the language used by any institution with a social purpose matches the ethos it seeks to inculcate and embody, and is applied consistently. The well thought out terminology now applied by Scope and domestic abuse charities shows the importance placed on using words which will not just combat entrenched views in the wider community, but will also positively affect the outlook of the people to whom they apply.
The power of language is demonstrated not just on posters and in press releases but also in people’s real lives. Scope’s home closure announcement is given colour by the story of Mandy, a woman with cerebral palsy whose life was turned around when an astute social worker found a communication device for her. “Imagine what it was like,” she invites us, “having a voice after all those years.” Words may never be as crucial as the services that charities provide daily, but they go beyond mere communication; they are a potent element of the armoury we have at our disposal.
By James Appleton, Project Manager, Pilotlight.