ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors describe how culture and language reflect and construct two paradigms, or discourses, of disability, namely the medical model and the social model. A medical model of disability makes meaning of disabled persons' experiences in terms of objective, innate conditions that limit their ability to participate in communities and learn in the general classroom setting. Social models of disability provide paradigm of disability that aim to move societal thinking beyond a discourse that primarily regards impairment and disability as an individual experience. As societies become more knowledgeable about the social and political contexts that characterize the lives and experiences of disabled persons, the influence of social models is ever more perceptible. In addition to emphasizing a socio-political perspective on disability, some disabled people reject people-first language because it minimizes the role that impairment and/or disability plays in their lives and identities and casts it negatively.
