ABSTRACT
As a matter of ethical policy, a nonprofit corporation in the health industry publicly refers to its clients as “individuals with developmental challenges,” and in external communications would never refer to them “handicapped” or “disabled people,” which it considers to be a demeaning form of labeling. However, in internal email communication, these clients may be routinely referred to as “handicapped” or “disabled” for the sake of efficiency and expediency (the external phrases are much longer). Is this organization hypocritical? Does it violate its own ethical standards and those of society at large when in its internal communication it uses politically incorrect terminology? Or is it possible that there is a way of understanding these opposing positions of communication as appropriate and compatible, a way of ethically “framing” these digital situations?
