ABSTRACT
The way in which people are labelled who are unable to fulfil the normal primary school educational requirements and certain IQ tests has differed very much over the course of time. Traditionally, they used to be called ‘debils’, ‘imbeciles’ and ‘idiots’ depending on the medical, pedagogical and psychological seriousness of their condition. Nowadays these terms are not only considered to be out of date but many people think that they are negative and pejorative terms for defining the learning capacities of a group of people. As a sociologist I am concerned with the meaning of these terms only as far as the general attitude of the public towards the labelled population is expressed through certain terms. The phrases ‘handicapped’ or ‘retarded’ are used here in a descriptive and neutral way or as quotations and we will always refer to a certain group in the population labelled with these terms by others.
