Image of Physical Disability in Social Work Articles

Image of Physical Disability in Social Work Articles Zuzana Černá INTRODUCTION Language is intertwined with human beings and the society as awhole, with their existence and development. Guided by our personal and professional interests, by expansion of discourse studies and development of disability studies, we survey the discourse of physical difference that is present in professional social work texts. As the term discourse is used with rather different meanings, we consider it essential to choose aconcept that corresponds with the aim of our research probe most; at the same time, we realize that it is expedient to practice asort of eclectic approach which takes the best of several concepts. We therefore find Blommaert’s (2005) and Baker’s (2006) concept of discourse as alanguage in action, which forms objects and produces aparticular version of events, probably the most suitable. Terminology used for health disorders, disadvantages and differences has undergone significant changes in recent decades. These changes have come hand in hand with aconsiderable progress in disability studies, which present analysis and interpretation of health disabilities within the man–society concept (Krhutová 2010:27), and with an inseparable emphasis on political correctness in society. Combining linguistics and social work, we aim at grasping the image and discourse of physical difference in social work articles, which subsequently refers back to the existence of arelationship between language, society and science. We also aim at promoting and strengthening the interdisciplinary nature of social work because together with Moxley (2013), we believe that interdisciplinarity links social work to other disciplines within complex domains of practice. It requires collaboration, integration of knowledge and action, and formation of common agenda of practice guided by unified goals. 1. OBJECTIVES Texts, transmitting both information and views, are powerful. In ascientific sphere, peer-reviewed texts are especially powerful because they guarantee acertain scientific level of presented views. In this probe, we survey chosen academic articles from the journal Sociální práce/Sociálna práca (Social Work) in order to find out expressions for aphysical difference, for persons with it, for intact persons, for help to these persons, and also negative expressions related to aphysical difference. We subsequently attempt at identifying discourse categories of aphysical difference in the texts, identities ascribed to persons with aphysical difference, and values of society. We furthermore aim at finding whether the language of surveyed articles reflect the OPEN ACCESS 42 FÓRUM SOCIÁLNÍ PRÁCE 1/2020 Act No.108/2006, Coll., on Social Services, which is considered amilestone in Czech social work. We also aim at strengthening the interdisciplinary nature of social work by means of pointing at links between social work and linguistics. We suppose to find out at least two different discourses: the discourse led by social work experts, which holds professional views of persons with disability and use upto-date politically correct language, and the discourse led by the lay public, the nature of which depends on concrete speakers. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Regarding the discourse of physical difference, the following should be considered: The term discourse has been popular in recent decades. It has been used in multiple disciplines and cross-disciplinary fields such as linguistics, psychology, social work, anthropology, ethnomethodology, cultural studies, human geography, discourse studies, or communication studies. The term is related to asociological stream of social constructivism which understands social reality as aphenomenon constructed by social interaction and communication, being therefore highly subjective (Berger, Luckmann, 1999). The term discourse does not have asingle meaning, it is used with avariety of them. Thus we can see that for example Stubbs (1983) understands it as alanguage above the sentence or clause, Blommaert (2005) as alanguage in action which produces aparticular version of events, Baker (2006) as apractice which systematically forms objects of which it speaks, Fairclough (2003) as asocial phenomenon affecting power relations in society, Wodak (2013) as away of speaking about an issue from aparticular perspective that influences both individuals and society and is historically determined by them. It is obvious that individual concepts share the idea of language featuring certain power over understanding issues, of relationships between language and outer reality. The submitted article follows mainly Blommaert’s and Baker’s concepts. Discourse as an abstract entity based on aconcrete text material (Fairclough, 2003) is constructed via interaction between texts and (their) contexts (Hořejší, 2019). Wodak (2013) states that significant outer (social, historical) events influence linguistic reflection of certain issues. These factors act as abroader context of texts. General characteristics of all texts, that is their inevitable relation to anetwork of other texts (quotes, references, allusions, paraphrases, comments, etc.), is what we— in agreement with Trpka (2017)— call intertextuality further on. It is discourse studies that have boomed considerably in recent decades as we can see for instance from newly emerged professional journals Discourse and Society(https://journals.sagepub.com/home/das), Discourse and Communication (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/dcm), or Discourse Studies (https://journals. sagepub.com/home/dis) that publish agreat amount of articles on language and its role in society. Development of disability studies (for instance Snyder, Mitchell, 2006; Thomas, 2007; Grue, 2016; Novosad, 2011; Krhutová, 2011; Kolářová 2013) corresponds with the development of discourse studies. In terms of Czech social work and its discourse of health difference, several works on terminology have emerged (e.g. Krhutová, 2010; OPEN ACCESS ZUZaNa ČERNÁ 43 Novosad, 2011; Kolářová, 2013) and terminology has undergone significant changes. Such changes have come hand in hand with the progress in disability studies, which present analysis and interpretation of health disabilities within the man–society concept (Krhutová 2010:27). However, the terminology is sometimes quite contradictory: Act No.108/2006 Coll., On Social Services, which had been long hoped-for as abreakthrough for grounding relevant terminology, stipulated in § 3g that zdravotní postižení (disability) is aphysical, mental, intellectual, sense or combined affliction the consequences of which make or could make such aperson dependent on another person’s assistance. Even Matoušek (2003) understands postižení mainly in its social context— as something which negatively afflicts aperson’s quality of life, mainly his/her ability to work and to keep relations with people. Novosad (2011) understands it as alimited function, ability or outcome in certain activities. On the other side of the spectrum, there is for instance Krhutová (2010), who defines postižení as an individual organ and/or functional damage of bodily functions, or Kolářová (2012), who treats postižení as the very difference of body/mind. Distinguishing hendikep and postižení is aconsequence of abinary opposition between the „natural“ (biological) and the „cultural/social“ (Kolářová 2012:45–46). Hendikep is understood mostly as asocial phenomenon— as limited participation of people with disability in social life (Krhutová, 2013), as asocial category that denotes aburden or adisadvantage (Vašutová, 2005), asocial consequence of disability (Jandourek 2001; Hartl, Hartlová, 2010). Matoušek (2003) defines it as an adverse social situation, resulting from adisorder, which leads such aperson to dis-ability in meeting expectations that are considered normal in his/her society. However, Oliver (1996) considers it to be aphysical phenomenon, concretely amissing part of alimb or adefective limb. Disabilita is arandomly used and in legislation untreated term for atransitory, long-term or permanent limitation; it is an opposite to the norm (Matoušek, 2008). Krhutová (2013) defines it as aterm covering inhibitions related to health impairment and resulting from social conditions. We can see that experts use terms with rather different meanings, ranging from emphasis on aphysical difference to emphasis on its social impacts. Even more confusions come into being when these terms are to be translated (from Czech to English and viceversa) because they come from different contextual background and therefore carry different connotations. Kolářová (2012:47) states that postižení has negative connotations (no wonder, the word stem lišis parallel to English afflict— author’s note) in the Czech context; however, it is translated most frequently as impairment, which does not carry negative connocations of non-health in the English context. She (2012:53) also suggests to translate English impairment as hendikep in Czech contexts. In 2011, World Health Organization’s terminology on health difference left its sofar impairment–disability–handicap scheme (see ICF, 2011) that judged social disadvantages of persons not on the basis of equal rights and opportunities but on the then concepts of normality. The scheme also treated disability as abodily/mental difference and as afactual basis of disadvantages (Kolářová 2012:50). Disability is translated inconsistently and sometimes without respect to meaning changes brought by disability studies as omezená schopnost, omezená způsobilost. Disability or (bodily) difference are terms used in order to critical deconstruct social OPEN ACCESS 44 FÓRUM SOCIÁLNÍ PRÁCE 1/2020 relations and power imbalances (Kolářová 2012:51). They can be translated as (tělesná) jinakost into Czech. In agreement with Kolářová (2012:49–50), we will translate disability as postižení and with Matoušek (2008) as disabilita within our text. In agreement with Kolářová (ibidem), we also make use of arather general term difference to denote any differences, disorders, limited functions on the level of body or senses. Physical difference was chosen to be analysed in this research probe because it is potentially visible at first sight and can therefore afflict perception of differences in an easier manner than mental and psychological differences. Together with Vašutová (2005), we will understand it as afflicting aperson’s ability to move. 3. METHODOLOGY With regard to our aim, we apply aqualitative research strategy, concretely discourse analysis. That is to say that discourse analysis is rather acomplex term not for asingle method consisting of pre-set steps but rather ageneral approach to language which takes the relation of language and its outer reality into account; it does not consider language amere means of information transfer but an autonomous phenomenon that helps to construct the world (Antaki 2008:6). We set the following criteria for texts to be analysed:1 The text is published in the Czech language.; The text is peer-reviewed.; The text belongs to asocial work journal that is registered in aquality scientific database.; The text is published between 2002 and 2017 (the year 2002 is the edition takeover by the Association of Educators in Social Work while the year 2017 is the last complete year before analysing the texts; moreover, this time span disposes of open-access electronic form of texts).; Its headline includes at least one of the following keywords: postižení, handicap/hendikep, disabilita, zdravotní znevýhodnění (translated most suitably as disability, impairment, health disadvantage). On the basis of comparing all relevant Czech professional periodicals on social issues and the databases they are in, we decided for the Sociální práce/Sociálna práca journal, which is registered in the Scopus database. Choosing asingle social work journal might seem insufficient in terms of making objective conclusions from the analysis but this text aims at bringing results of apartial probe, not acomprehensive study. Each paper that met all criteria was analysed; the whole corpus contained finally altogether 6 out of 415 academic papers (that is 1.45 %, which guides us to aconclusion that aphysical disability is not amoving topic for the academic social work sphere). As academic papers in this journal have up to ten thousand words and we analyse six articles, the whole corpus is expected to have maximum 60,000 words and can thus be considered small. Anyway, it is attractive in terms of aprobe. The following table outlines the analysed texts: 1 The criteria for ajournal and text choice are almost identical with those set in my previous research (Černá, 2019), which makes comparison possible. OPEN ACCESS ZUZaNa ČERNÁ 45 Mark Volume/ Year Title of the paper Author(s) T324/2010 Teorie amodely zdravotního postižení (Theories and Methods of Disabilities) Krhutová T4 4/2010 Institucionalizace jako překážka sociální inkluze osob se zdravotním postižením (Institutionalisation as an Obstacle to Social Inclusion of Persons with Disability) Vávrová T5 4/2010 Priority krajů aobcí pro oblast sociálních služeb pro seniory aosoby se zdravotním postižením (Priorities of Regions and Municipalities in the Sphere of Social Services for Senior Citizens and Persons with Disability) Bareš T6 1/2010 Role sociálního pracovníka vposuzování životní situace osob sdisabilitou (Role of aSocial Worker in Assessment of aLife Situation in Persons with Disability) Matlasová, Kupková T8 3/2006 Celoživotní vzdělávání jako nástroj podpory sociální inkluze lidí se zdravotním postižením (Lifelong Learning as aMeans of Support of Social Inclusion of People with Disability) Novosad T9 2/2003 Analýza sociálních služeb pro občany se zdravotním postižením (Analysis of Social Services for Citizens with Disability) Burkertová Table 1:Outline of analysed academic papers All texts are analysed by hand, which corresponds with the qualitative strategy we decided for. Treating the discourse of physical disability in the aforementioned papers, we work with the hypertheme (Wodak, 2001:66) of difference and analyse the following items: 1. lexical tools physical disability persons with aphysical disability persons without aphysical disability help to persons with aphysical disability negative connotations to aphysical disability 2. categories of aphysical disability 3. ascribed identities to persons with aphysical disability 4. shared values 5. intertextuality Table 2:Outline of analysed items3 2 Numbers are given to articles only for technical reasons and correspond with the numbers given to texts in abroader research, which the submitted probe is apart of. 3 The same items were analyzed as in Černá (2019) so that the author can compare both researches whenever necessary. OPEN ACCESS 46 FÓRUM SOCIÁLNÍ PRÁCE 1/2020 4. ANALYSIS OF TEXTS AND ITS RESULTS LEXICaL TOOLS Lexis (vocabulary) is arelatively quick mirror reflecting reality (including its changes); it is faster than the phonological, grammatical or stylistic system of alanguage. Therefore it is lexis of the academic papers that we survey here. In the corpus survey, there is awide range of expressions for physical difference per se, randomly porucha/disorder; dysfunkce/dysfunction (T6); jinakost/difference (T3). Jinakost is aterm used by Krhutová (2010) or Neudoerflová (2009) in the surveyed corpus. Despite several terminological disagreements between Krhutová and Kolářová, this term is considered apt by both of them. Hendikep is used several times with the meaning of the very physical difference (T8) in agreement with some sources (e.g. Oliver, 1996) and in disagreement with others (e.g. Jandourek, 2001; Matoušek, 2003; Krhutová, 2013). All articles that use the expression hendikep in its bodily meaning were sent to the journal’s peer-review process before the Act on Social Services came into force. The Act calls aphysical and/or sense affliction, the consequences of which make or could make such person dependent on another person’s assistance, zdravotní postižení (not hendikep). Quite a„problematic discrepancy“ remains when hendikep is proclaimed to be asocial phenomenon (Hartl, Hartlová, 2010; Krhutová, 2013) but used as aphysical difference in expert sources from the same period (see T8). These confusions might be potentially caused by inertia as hendikep had been used primarily and for along time with the meaning of bodily difference in the Czech social work context. In terms of persons with physical disability, it is worth noticing that postižený/ disabled is commonly used in the position of anoun (adisabled) or an adjective (adisabled child)4 by some experts (Vávrová, 2010; Neudoerflová, 2009; Novosad, 2006), which is considered inappropriate by others— Krhutová (2010:50–51) says that on our latitudes, there is the rule that a“health disabled” person is defined by his/her disability; the person and the disability merge into one. Separation of these categories is absolutely vital. On the contrary, Kolářová (2012:53) states that expressions postižení/disabled and lidé spostižením/people with impairment/disability are not necessarily competing. They rather represent different political strategies. Humanistic trends “people first” affirm that the only acceptable expression is the former, while the latter reduces aperson to his/her disability. Disabled people/the disabled represent anti-ableism and are no more negative. Pejorative expressions appear in the corpus, too; fortunately, they are rare (T3: kripl/cripple; T4: sociální mrtvola/social corpse) and solely in the mediated language of the lay public. Such expressions seriously offend people with disability; sociální mrtvola gives them actually no chance to social life at all. In terms of persons without disability, we found for example veřejnost/the public (T8) or společnost považuje lidi spostižením/society considers persons with disability (T3). Society and the public are normally neutral but in this context, they de facto imply that people with disability are not included in the society or the public. There is one 4 Černá (2019:17) found the same in acorpus of different texts. OPEN ACCESS ZUZaNa ČERNÁ 47 case in which the intact society/the majority is called people so-called healthy. Such aword combination implies that it is only the point of view that makes the difference between healthy and unhealthy people. As far as the language indicating negative aspects of aphysical difference is concerned, it is rich both in form and frequency. Disability is mostly connected with negative expressions, e.g. atragedy (T3: osobní tragédie/personal tragedy), inferiority (T3: Negativní “identita postižené osoby” jako osoby méněcenné/Negative “identity of adisabled person” as an inferior person), or discrimination (T6: boj proti diskriminaci/struggle against discrimination). Some of the expressions are rather strong— for instance, osobní tragédie/ personal tragedy (T3) implies hopelessness of living; společenská smrt/ social death (T4) is extremely pejorative because it directly excludes persons with disabilities from social life. That is to say that all of those negative expressions are found in passages presenting the view of the lay public and refuse any potentially positive interpretation of difference. But if we admit that reality is constructed by communication (Berger, Luckmann, 1999), language produces aparticular version of events (Blommaert, 2005) and systematically forms objects of which it speaks (Baker, 2006), then we can expect that the more frequent the positive expressions are in the texts (taking the challenge, coping with the disadvantage), the greater chance that recipients do not consider disability that fatal and hopeless is. There are numerous expressions for help to people with physical disability; randomly boj proti diskriminaci/struggle against discrimination (T6); parkování zdarma pro osoby spostižením/free parking for people with disabilities (T5). The exceptionally high number of proposals in the corpus prove that the authors (and the society) are not indifferent towards people with disability and regard compensation of their disabilities important. This corresponds with for example the Act or Hartl’s and Hartlová’s (2010) view of influenceable social and cultural consequences of an unifluenceable disability. Compared to Černá (2019:18), i.e. “the authors present abroad spectrum of help to persons with avisual or hearing impairment in order to minimize social impact of the impairment”, our findings in this reserach is actually very similar. To summarize it, neutral expressions postižení, porucha, jinakost are common for the very (bodily) difference. Hendikep is used with the meaning of the impairment as well as its social consequences. Disability is depicted mostly negatively. Persons with disability are called both osoby spostižením and postižené osoby. Neither of these names humiliated them in the given context. What could humiliate and produce anegative discourse are pejorative expressions such as kripl or sociální mrtvola, both used by the lay public. Some expressions (společnost and veřejnost) get their negative meaning no sooner than on the grounds of their contextual meaning. The exceptionally high number of proposals to help show that the experts regard counterbalancing the disabilities important. CaTEGORIES OF PHySICaL dISaBILITy In the analysed corpus, there are several discourse-of-physical-disability categories: The experts view physical disability mainly as astimulus to help (T6: omezená schopnost plně chápat/limited ability to fully understand), adifference (T3: odchylka od nepsaného tolerančního limitu ve společnosti/deviation from the unregistered tolerance OPEN ACCESS 48 FÓRUM SOCIÁLNÍ PRÁCE 1/2020 limit in society), an obstacle to social inclusion (T6: překážky bránící jejich seberealizaci azaměstnání/barriers obstruct their self-realisation and employment), adisease (T3: nemocný anezdravý jedinec, který je definován svým postižením/ill and unhealthy individual who is defined by his disability), dependence (T3: tato osoba bude vždy vzávislé, nemocné, nezdravé roli/this person will always be in adependent, ill, unhealthy role), need of legislative support (whole T9) and as acall for equality (T3: Osoby spostižením jsou kompetentní azodpovědné za svá rozhodnutí. Mají základní právo výběru, stejných příležitostí amožností jako ostatní lidé./Persons with disabilities are competent and responsible for their decisions. They have afundamental right to choice, to have the same opportunities and possibilities as other people do.). What is extremely interesting is disability as asocial construct (T3: Negativní “identita postižené osoby” jako osoby méněcenné je konstruována formou jazyka./The negative “identity of adisabled person” as an inferior person is constructed by alanguage form.) because this view directly supports our opinion that language influences reality. Experts are aware of adifficult starting point in people with adisability and of the necessity to have it counterbalanced. The following example shows that the lay public consider disability as asource of inferiority, afatal burden, and tragedy (T3: vnímání osoby spostižením jako “oběti” apostižení automaticky jako životní tragédie/perception of aperson with adisability as “avictim” and the disability automatically as alife tragedy). Černá (2019:18) added also aproblem, uneducability, limitations, pressure, fear, or absence of something essential. As we can see, there are two discourses in the whole corpus: the discourse of experts and of the lay public. The discourse made by persons with adisability themselves is missing (cf. Černá 2019 where it was significantly present in the text marked as T2). aSCRIBEd IdENTITIES Based on the aforementioned examples, we discern the following essential identities ascribed to persons with physical disability by the lay public: apoor fellow, forced to face alife tragedy in the form of disability, its victim; afool; and an outsider. These identities correspond with those found by Černá (2019:22), which implies that no matter what type of disability aperson has, he/she is considered the same. Contrary to Černá (ibid.), we did not find the identity of abad mother or of asexually unattractive woman that were used in connection with unseeing women. From the experts’ perspective, people with disability are mostly people who need help, which is— logically— the same as in Černá (2019). SHaREd vaLUES The following values emerged from the corpus: According to the experts, health and physical appearance are important in our society; regrettably, persons who do not dispose of them are often considered inferior; persons with aphysical disability should be helped to compensate their disadvantage so that they can command their everyday lives (the last two correspond with findings in Černá, 2019:23). According to the lay public, health and physical appearance are valuable and persons who lack them are inferior and should not “hinder” the intact majority. It is obvious that the OPEN ACCESS ZUZaNa ČERNÁ 49 experts’ discourse is antidiscriminatory and pro-help, which corresponds not only with the general mission of social work but also with the Act on Social Services that brought human dignity into practice. The discourse of the lay public in fact says that there is aminority of people with aworsened health state but there is no moral appeal to help them. As there is practically no detectable discourse made by persons with adisability themeselves, we cannot compare it to that of Černá (2019). NOTES ON INTERTEXTUaLITy Intertextuality is alink between texts and other texts as well as imanent characteristics of texts being apart of abroader context (Trpka, 2017). And as discourse is constructed through interaction between texts and contexts (Hořejší, 2019) and significant outer factors influence linguistic reflection of certain issues (Wodak, 2013), let us comment on intertextuality at this point. There is agreat number of references to other authors and to works of binding character (acts, regulations, charters, action plans, etc.), which corresponds with the expert style of the academic papers. Both official documents and expert texts serve as an expedient source for authors to base their claims on formal norms and grounds of concrete sciences, attaching thus weight to their own claims. References set the texts into aparticular scientific and social background, making their relationships tangible. What is more, numerous references to and quotations from documents and other authors prove that aparticular field of research is based on elaborated grounds. Among the official documents, which are repeatedly mentioned, there are for instance Evropská sociální charta (European Social Charter), Listina základních práv asvobod (Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms), International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, Bílá kniha vsociálních službách (White Book in Social Services), Národní akční plán sociálního začleňování na léta 2006–2008 (The National Action Plan for Social Inclusion 2006–2008), or Kritéria transformace, humanizace adeinstitucionalizace vybraných služeb sociální péče (Criteria of Transformation, Humanization and Deinstitutionalisation of Chosen Social Care Services). All the documents emphasise the intended avoidance of exclusion of people with disability from society, their intended inclusion into it and day-to-day respect for their fundamental human rights. Act No.108/2006 Coll., On Social Services, is mentioned many times in the texts as abasis of contemporary social services and measures. By its provisions, the Act brings partnership into practice, promoting human dignity by giving competence to people with disability to be more involved in decision making about themselves. We found out that all the analysed texts respect the vision of partnership promoted by the Act (except for the passages that treat how laymen perceive disability). However, we were wrong with our assumption that there would be aconsiderable change in vocabulary in texts published after the Act came into force. Although the texts widely use the terms postižení, sociální začleňování/social inclusion, sociální vyloučení/ social exclusion (introduced in § 3 of the Act), they also commonly use other terms such as disabilita or hendikep (which are not mentioned in the Act). Therefore we can say that vocabulary of the texts is independent of the Act. The period between the Act’s coming in force and publication of the academic papers is probably too short for alanguage to reflect new reality. OPEN ACCESS