ABSTRACT
Some of the goals of disability studies according to Linton are “to interrogate the traditional curriculum,” “weave disabled people back into the fabric of society,” and change the focus from disabled people as having to be “acted on” so that they can fit existing social orders and structures to instead enquire what social changes can be effected so that the environment is conducive to the inclusion, on their own terms, of people living with disabilities. Disability, as opposed to impairment, considers the whole person and their sociocultural milieu and frames difference as diversity of experience rather than a departure from a pre-established “norm.” Applied linguists have often worked at the intersection of race, ethnicity, class, and gender, formulating, given their observations, theories to explain the use of the language as mediated by these social elements, either by themselves or in combination in what is increasingly greater intersectionality.
