Abstract

The study examines international, European and Greek sample data and focuses on threat in naming disabled people. Findings show a gradual shift in the representation of disabled people, in legal texts. The shift relates to the implementation of medical and social mo­dels of disability, which seem to regulate discursive representation of the disabled. The further back the analy­sis goes in time, the more manifestations of the medical model seem to appear, with the social model taking over as the analysis moves forward in time. Greece seems to have its own manner to adopt current trends in representing the disabled, as questionnaire results reveal. The AμεΑ (AmeA) abbreviation, widely used in the Greek context nowadays, seems to set anew the representation of the disabled, toning down the offensive value of previous terms. This is probably because Greek may have additional barriers in abandoning the medical model, because of culture-specific communication style features it prefers. The significa­nce of the study lies in that it advances understanding of cross-cultural perceptions of disability, which – in Greek – involves manipulation of the terms’ threatening potential.

Keywords: disability, legal discourse, medicalsocial models, european union, bilingual texts

1. Introduction: A fuzzy term

Disability studies is an expanding field and a highly interdisciplinary one cutting across literature, linguistics, philosophy, technology etc. (Solvang 2000, Barnes, Barton and Oliver 2002, Mabbett 2002, Siebers 2011). Disability is nowadays treated as a social phenomenon that affects societal and financial growth. It is seen as a barrier that needs to be surpassed and eliminated in the long run, for allowing an unimpeded operation of state apparatuses and realization of long-term goals for sustainable development. Disability is a rather fuzzy term, which institutions have attempted to clarify and discursively represent the disabled in various ways. For instance, in English, a part of disability studies has been theorizing about the terms ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ and their potential difference and interplay. The Anglocentric point of view on disability, as mainly expressed in the Disabled People’s International (DPI) terminology, ‘impairment’ is seen as the functional limitation within an individual caused by physical, sensory or mental impairment, while ‘disability’ is seen as the loss or limitation of opportunities on the part of the disabled to take part in the normal life of the community, on an equal level with others, due to physical and social barriers (Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2011).

Another pair of terms in English is the one between the items ‘persons with disability’ vs. ‘people with disability’. In disability studies, ‘people with disabilities’ has been contested as implying that disability is something inherent to an individual, thus undermining the political nature of disability. Major representative organizations, throughout the world, prefer the term disabled persons, for (a) emphasi­zing the social inducement of disability, i.e., that people become disabled by society, rather than accidentally residing in it and (b) avoiding to highlight the individual character of the problem (Whalley Hammel 2006). People focuses on the individual rather than on the societal aspect and runs contrary to broadening the societal perception of disability.

2. Literature review

Αs mentioned, perceptions of disability vary and the interpretations assumed seem to be ideologically different (Oliver 2009, Oliver and Barnes 2010). A model of disability is important because it may be the basis on which states, institutional agents or regulatory authorities shape their policies on disability and their support measures; in this sense it is important for authorities and citizens to critically monitor the model of disability they conform to, in interaction and law-making. The medical model was followed by the social welfare model, which the following subsections elaborate on.

2.1 The medical view

The medical view sees “medical impairments as automatically resulting in disa­dvantage and exclusion, which can be ameliorated by cash benefits and other social welfare benefits” (Mabbett 2002:20); “people with different disabilities are the object of treatment and care […] while their disability remains their most conspicuous defining attribute” (Stopa 2012:146). Hence, people see themselves as disabled and marked in terms of the impairment identity. The prevalence of this model however has rather led to some marginalization of people with disabilities instead of promoting their integration in society (in labour, in education). As expert evidence shows, their inclusion is now more crucial than ever before, considering the economic circumstances prevailing in this era of recess and uncertainty. OECD seems very much aware of the financial deficit a marginalization of the disabled may entail and argues in favour of integrating them in the labour market:

integrating more fully into the labour market people with disability is essential in meeting economic and social challenges arising from these broad drivers of change. The recent economic downturn is further reinforcing this urgent need, as people with disability have been hard hit by job losses and the reduction in job vacancies. This may push them to the margin of the labour market, raising the risk of further structural increases in the disability beneficiary caseload (OECD 2010:21).

The medical model treats disability on the basis of its individual aspects and not as a multi-faceted social issue:

This characteristic confirms that we are facing a clear manifestation of the medical paradigm of treatment of disability, a circumstance that is incoherent, as other authors have already pointed out, if we take into account how other institutions of the European Union have been strong advocates of the implementation of the social paradigm of treatment of disability since 1996 (Gutiérrez Colominas 2017: 3).

2.2 The social/affirmation model

The social model sees disability as a social phenomenon rather than a medical one. The social model emerged in the 1980s, followed by the affirmation model. In enhancing the affirmative model, Cameron (2013) explains that “it also establishes their rights [of the disabled] to enjoy being who they are as people with impairments rather than regarding impairment as a cloud overshadowing their existence” (2013:28) and focuses on their activity as social actors, thus in the frame of a comprehensive relationship.

The affirmation model (Swain and French 2000) caters for actual inclusion in society: the beginning was marked with the social model which gave the disabled persons voice and occupied a space for them in the public arena: now this space is about to be filled and understood in terms of integration and interconnection, through an ‘affirmation’ of disability as an aspect of normalcy (Thomas 2004).

3. Methodology

As suggested, the aim of the study was to examine how the representation of disability plays out in the global/European/Greek context diachronically. The scope of the research can be huge, so the study selectively examines (a) early interna­tion­al dis­cou­rses on disability (1971-1981, with their official Greek versions), (b) European discourses on disability (1995-2014, with their official Greek versions) and (c) Greek discourses on disability between 1990-2018 (originally drafted in Greek).

The selection of data types may be justified on the grounds that if translated data show tendencies in naming disability in Greek, the monolingual data may show preferences in the Greek context more intuitively, without influence from another version. Table 1 summarizes selection of data in terms of the time span they derive from.

Table 1. Periods and types of data selection

The study, thus, examines both parallel data and Greek original (monolingual) legal discourse in order to trace tendencies in rendition of the terms ‘disabled’/’disability’ (see appendix for the list of data sources and word-count). The total word-count of the data set is 271,584 words.

After the authors’ analysis of the data (etic perspective), the study adopted an emic perspective by addressing 43 Greek respondents; the intention was to elicit evidence on the non-/threatening value of certain disability terms, asking respondents to seek appropriate renditions into Greek, by using their intuition in Greek. Results showed that there are terms which are not used in the EU context, which however seem to resonate with current native preferences.

4. Data analysis

The section presents parallel data samples which display variation in the transfer of disability issues, organized in three groups, i.e., from the international (for instance, UN discourses), European (EU discourses) and Greek context.

4.1 The international context

The General Assembly of the United Nations has prepared a declaration on the rights of persons with mental disorder in order to promote higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress and development. Sample texts derive from

• The Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons. Proclai­med by General Assembly, resolution 2856 (XXVI) of 20 December 1971.
• The Sundberg Declaration 1981.

Example 1 comes from the Sundberg Declaration, 1981. The World Conference on Actions and Strategies for Education, Prevention and Integration organized by the Spanish Government in co-operation with UNESCO (1981), set anew the goals of the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ and highlighted the need for steps to be taken for (a) rehabilitation and other support to reduce the handicapping effects of disability and (b) meeting the needs of disabled persons for full participation in social life:

Example 1

Τhe assumption is that the two texts (the EN and GR version), which are indicative of the language used by  various international instruments, issued at that point, suggest that the disabled people are somewhat separate from the remaining population. Τhis is conveyed by the item ‘normal individual’ which actually segregates the disabled persons from the remaining populace, by further implying that their condition is not normal. The English version may gloss over disability by the term ‘disabled persons’, but the Greek version seems more aware of a medical interpretation of disability, by explaining the range of types of disabilities referred to, in terms of options like ‘σοβαρό­τητα των μειονεκτη­μά­των και ανικανο­τήτων τους’ (the severity of their disadvantages and inabilities). Besides, the term mentally retarded (literally rendered in Greek) is highly offensive and impolite towards the disabled, attacking their positive face (Brown and Levinson 1978/1987)[2]. Another shift between the two versions is the shift of the deictic adjective (EN ‘those’ → GR ‘these’): in English see ‘those rights’ assuming some distance and,  in Greek, see ‘these persons’, which implies proximity: interpersonal proximity is a positive politeness trait and Greek nowadays tends to show a tendency for positive politeness strategies, in interaction (Sifianou 1992), in contrast to English which shows a tendency for using negative politeness strategies, indicating that it favours interpersonal distance.

In theoretical terms, this point of view aligns with the morals of medical sociology, a theory that was dominant in the decades preceding the 1990’s (when the social model of disability emerged) and focused on the medicalization of disability that treats disability as a deviance from the norm, as a merely individual matter that impedes the persons due to their medical impairments. As Linton (1998) and Linton and Bérubé (1998) suggest addressing disability as a merely personal condition does not offer a comprehensive perception of disability:

Briefly, the medicalization of disability casts human variation as devi­an­ce from the norm, as pathological condition, as deficit and, signifi­can­tly, as an individual burden and personal tragedy. Society, in agreeing to assign medical meaning to disability, colludes to keep the issue within the purview of the medical establishment, to keep it a personal matter and “treat” the condition and the person with the condition rather than “treating the social processes and policies that constrict disabled peoples’ lives (Linton 1998:162).

This section offered a sample of discourse which implements a rather medical inter­pre­tation of disability, with the Greek version enforcing the medical inter­pre­tation even further, by favouring the specific (‘whatever the origin, nature and the severity of their disadvantages and inabilities’) and avoiding vagueness. Favouring the specific in Greek is manifested in quite a few contexts, in various ways, and has been grammaticalized through a frequent use of the definite article, even with proper names and generics (Sidiropoulou 2019). This is also manifested in example 2, where ‘All disabled persons’ is rendered in Greek as ‘Every disabled person’.

 4.2 The language of the European legal instruments

This section examines rendition of disability related terms at a more recent time span, 1995-2014 (see appendix for European data sources and word count), to trace ren­dition of disability-related terms in the official Greek versions of the selected terms.

Back in 2003, the European Union officially acknowledged that equality had not yet been achieved for the disabled and declared the year 2003 as the European Year of Persons with Disabilities suggesting that a turn should be made in the European frame towards removing all impediments that create difficulties for disabled people:

2003 is the European Year of People with Disabilities. The year will drive progress towards achieving equal rights for people with disabilities. Across Europe attention will be focused on the many areas of European society where barriers and discrimination still exist for the one in ten Europeans with a disability (The European Year of People with Disabilities 2003:8).

The ‘European Strategy on Disability 2010-2020’ brings to the fore notions like accessibility, participation, equality, employment, education and training, social pro­te­ction, and health. The Greek version does not seem content with its readily available option for the English term ‘disability’, in Greek ‘αναπηρία’ (disability); the drafter complements the term with the term ‘ειδικές ανάγκες’ (special needs) as if the term ‘disability’ is not adequate or appropriate. Example 2 shows an instance of this.

Example 2

The question that arises at this point concerns how prevalent these options may be in the data set, in terms of frequency. Table 2 shows number of occurrences per term (counted manually) in the parallel versions, Table 3 shows frequency percentages of certain terms in the English and Greek version of the data.

Table 2. Total occurrences of disability-related vocabulary in a 13,801-word data set of parallel court of Justice decisions.

Table 3 shows percentages in the use of the terms ‘disability’/’disabled’, ‘sickness’ and ‘limitation’ and their Greek rendition.

Table 3. Court of Justice press releases: Frequency of terms in the parallel versions

The first row of Table 3 shows that ‘αναπηρία’/’ανάπηρος’ (disability/disabled) is less frequent in Greek, with ‘ειδικές ανάγκες’ (special needs) taking over, which does not appear in the English version. Measurement shows that it is as if Greek is trying to avoid the offensiveness of the term ‘αναπηρία’/’ανάπηρος’, to improve the representation of the disabled. The local assumption is that the most offensive item is ‘ανάπηρος’ (disabled) rather than ‘αναπηρία’ (disability), because the nominalization raises the level of formality and tones down offensiveness.

The next section presents samples of original legal Greek discourse, related to disability.

4.3 The Greek context

Αs mentioned, the Greek primary legislation (laws, presidential decrees, legislative decrees, ministerial decisions etc.) encompasses different categories of acts in the areas of social welfare and benefits, recruitment and allocation of pensions, education and accessibility. A diachronic perspective would show to what extent Greek primary legislation keeps at pace with the relevant European legislation and with the scientific and academic advancements in the field of disability studies.

Following the ratification of the CPRD (Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities) in 2012 by the Greek Parliament, the provisions on disability have come into full force and legal effect. Within the beneficial framework of the Convention, the Greek state advanced certain regulatory amendments and issued guidelines on its implementation.

Yet, a recent official report on Greece, under the title ‘European Semester 2017/2018 country fiche on disability-Greece’, prepared by ANED (Academic Network of European Disability, Elena Strati 2017), focuses on some key aspects in implementing the disability-centered policies in Greece, and points – among others – to social inequality and incomplete equal treatment laws:

-Statistical data on the situation of disabled people in Greece shows wide equality gaps among disabled and non-disabled people within the coun­try, and considerable disadvantage in comparison to EU averages across the EU2020 target areas.

- Nevertheless, policy for improving accessibility is still far from being opera­tio­nal, with specific actions, coordination, monitoring and enforce­ment plans still incomplete. The assigned focal points and monitoring mechanisms should consider the reasons why existing equal treatment law in employment (in force since 2005) has not been widely effective so far (2017: 5, emphasis added).

Example 3 comes from the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) scheme, 2017, stipulated by the Joint Ministerial Decision No Δ23/οικ.30299/2377/2016 - GG 2089/Β/7-7-2016. It aims at regulating employment and vocational training and providing a safety net for those at risk of poverty. However, social protection remains a key gap in the synergies between the different areas of policy, particularly for disabled people who are unable to work and/or require high levels of support. Article 2 par.4 shows that the use of abbreviation (ΑμεΑ) for disabled people in Greek is an efficient option (with no grammatical suffix) and is extremely frequent in discourse[3], even beyond the legal context. It sets the naming process anew, avoids potential offensive connota­tions attached to the term ‘ανάπηρος’ in everyday usage.

Example 3

If a 2016 legal text (example 3) makes use of the ‘ΑμεΑ’ abbreviation for regulating the offensive value of ‘ανάπηρος’ (disabled) in their discursive representation, a 1990 text is expected to be more reflective of the medical representation of disability.

Example 4 comes from Law No. 1902/1990 – (article 27 regulation of pension and other issues) and refers to severe disabilities, pathological conditions and medical prediction, manifesting an awareness of the medical model (see ‘βαριά ανάπηρος’ (heavily disabled), ‘λόγω πάθησης’ (because of a condition).

Example 4

The top-down approach taken in this study will now be checked against Greek native speaker insight through a questionnaire which sought to elicit assessment of the potential value of terms in the target context.

5. The questionnaire

The questionnaire intended to capture lay persons’ perception of certain disability terms with respect to their offensiveness in the Greek context and was answered in June 2022. The questionnaire addressed 43, 8th semester undergraduate students, who were aware of shifts translation practice may entail, their significance for meaning-making and were already feeling responsible for tracing cross-cultural equivalents for options, whenever a chance presented itself. The first question asked respondents to suggest degrading disability terms in Greek.

Are you aware of any Greek disability-related terms that could be offensive or harsh? If so, please mention some here.

Students suggested several degrading items, some of which were too offensive and would not appear in an official text.

You traced the following sentence in an English leaflet on disabled people: Organizations must adjust the way they do things to try to remove barriers or disadvan­tages to disabled people. How would you best translate the term in a way that would not be offensive?

The terms ‘άτομα/άνθρωποι με αναπηρία/αναπηρίες’ (persons/people with disability/ies) and ‘άτομα/άνθρωποι με ειδικές ανάγκες’ (persons/people with special needs) were preferred by 43 percent each, suggesting that the latter term felt equally appropriate with the former. The third question was also a translation task:

You traced the following sentence in the ‘Emergency Handbook of the UNCHR on People with Disabilities’: […] Make sure the language you use to describe persons with disabilities respects their dignity and humanity. How would you best translate the term persons with disabilities in Greek, in your everyday transactions?

‘Άτομα/άνθρωποι με ειδικές ανάγκες’ (persons/people with special needs) was equally preferred by 17 people each (39.53 percent), which reveals that the term had resonance among trainee translators who were already in the bilingual state translators find themselves in when mediating. The questionnaire findings show that a considerable number of students sought an alternative term for ‘disabled people’ and ‘persons with disabilities’ because they were not content with the readily available straightforward option ‘άτομα/άνθρωποι με αναπηρία/αναπηρίες’ (persons/people with disability/ies).

6. Discussion

Term variation in the Greek version is broader than that of the English version as the data set shows. In the international texts – until circa 2000 – the term ‘disabled persons’ was rendered as ‘άτομα με ειδικές ανάγκες’ (persons with special needs) but, later, the term was rendered literally, ‘ανάπηροι’ or ‘άτομα με αναπηρίες’ (e.g., documents under no 14-19 in the appendix) and, lately, the item ‘ανάπηρος’ seems to have prevailed. The term ‘άτομα με ειδικές ανάγκες’ was motivated by an intention to eliminate offensiveness; when checked with a Greek audience, through a questionnaire, the term was interpreted as sensitive and consi­derate of the disabled persons’ needs, pointing at the socially-centered model of disability, which is the prevailing one nowadays, in the disability context. Like Butlers’ ‘Bodies that Matter’, it suggests that disability is a social construction conveying political associations, power relati­ons and the political identity of disabled persons. Disability research intends to explore in which way “social constructionism collaborates with the misrepresentation of the disabled body in the political sphere” (Siebers 2001:155).

Despite the bottom-up view of lay people preferring the term ‘person with special needs’, over the term ‘ανάπηρος’, the item ‘ανάπηρος’ prevails nowadays and there seem to be some reasons for it.

First, there is a straightforward nominalization (‘αναπηρία’ [disability]), which the adjective is etymologically connected to, whereas the item ‘special needs’ is more ambiguous as a nominal, in its semantic scope.  

Another reason is that the prevalence of the term αναπηρία (disability) over special needs may be a manifestation of the directness vs. indirectness intention (respectively) in naming disabled people, and if Greek favours directness (as a positive politeness culture, Sifianou 1992), the assumption is that the former term is expected to prevail.

The data show that early Greek texts paint a representation of disability which stresses personal inability to accomplish tasks and deprivation, neglects the societal factor, that is, the society’s potential to somewhat compensate for a personal condition, which may upgrade the life quality of the disabled.

7. Concluding remarks

The assumption seems to be that Greece is abandoning the medical model (following the international trend) and is moving towards a social interpretation of disa­bili­ty, through the provisions taken, the AmeA abbreviation, etc. However, there may also be some cultural barriers which may be hindering this process.

Greece may not be as proficient in the transition to the social model process, because one of the communication styles, which Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov (2010) refer to in order to categorize cultures, is the ‘(high/low) power distance’, namely, to what extent speakers of a language assume that it is normal to acknowledge power inequality among members of a society (high power distance) or not (and prefer low power distance). Greek is a high-power distance culture, in Hofstede Hofstede and Minkov’s (2010) framework, if compared to English (a low power distance culture); the feature is ubiquitous in interaction, not least through the tu/vous distinction at school, in academia, at the hospital, in the EU context, in the interaction of the state with the citizen etc., but other manifestations as well.  One would expect that appreciation of the high status of a medical expert (vs. the status of the disabled) may somewhat clash with the social interpretation goal, as regards perception of disability. The assumption is that the social interpretation of disability is still a goal, but appreciation of the medical expert is deeply rooted in the Greek ‘software of the mind’ and may hinder the transition to the social model or the transition may find other devices to manifest itself, like for instance the preference for the term people with special needs or the AmeA abbreviation. 

In examining the transfer of taboo items from English into Greek through translation in the press, Sidiropoulou (1998) found that the Greek target press context was less tolerant to taboo terms than the English one, so Greek newspapers tended to neutralize the offensive value of items (as, for instance, manifested in the following source (English) and target (Greek) press headlines: e.g. EN ‘A boy without a penis’ → GR ‘Two sex changes in a lifetime’ (Sidiropoulou 1995), where the Greek headline focused on the suffering of the experience and eliminated the taboo item. The example shows that there is an intuitive concern for the offensive value of ‘ανάπηρος’ (disabled) in the Greek context, with English being more tolerant.

The study examined instances of Greece’s transition from the ideology of the medical model towards the social one, in the discursive treatment of disability and highlighted some pragmatic features of the language that may be affecting the transition to the social model.

There seem to be two competing forces in the Greek context, which affect rendition of disability terms in legal documents in Greek: the directness tendency of the Greek society to employ positive politeness strategies which may favour the use of the term ‘ανάπηρος’ (disabled), following the English version, vs. the concern for the offensiveness of the term ‘ανάπηρος’ (disabled), in a society which tends to favour interpersonal proximity in interaction.

Despite communication with respondents, the legal discourse, which the present study examined, manifests a top-down approach, namely, discourse produced by an institutional authority (e.g., the state) for the disabled, in regulating disability issues for citizens. A bottom-up approach would involve how disabled people may prefer to represent themselves or how society members represent them in discourse cross-culturally, which is a highly interesting open research problem.

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