Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture
Disability provides one of the best examples of how the language of institutional discourse systems determines material practices in ways that can work to the advantage—and disadvantage—of the disabled person. For example, diagnostic labels both predict and determine outcomes by denying or providing medical treatments or educational services.
The way we understand, relate to, and behave toward a disabled person depends upon the language we use to describe that disability. And that, in our modern medical culture, is based upon what the diagnosis is. That means that, for the disabled person, diagnosis = destiny.
This is because the diagnosis is part of a larger narrative, a story that describes not only what the disabled body is like and how it should be understood in the present but also what that body is capable of in the future (the prognosis).
So, for example, if the story of the diagnosis says that the developmentally disabled person is not capable of learning beyond, say, a junior high school level, then s/he may be denied the opportunity to be mainstreamed into high school.
Likewise, if the diagnostic story says that the disease one has been diagnosed with is terminal, then insurance companies may refuse to cover an expensive surgery to improve one's quality of life.
Or, if a fetus is diagnosed with a disorder that makes it unlikely that s/he will ever live independently, parents may be encouraged—or feel obligated for the good of the child and/or of society—to terminate the pregnancy.
In other words, folks, we are the stories we tell. And we're also the stories that are told about us.