The role of metaphor and indexicality in the reinforcement of social meanings of disability

This chapter examines ideological meanings of words or phrases relating to physical disability within conversations from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014, and three months of articles from 2014 in the News on Web corpus. The chapter outlines campaigns and debates about language and disability and the influence of the media. Analysis and discussion take the concept of ableism and the sociolinguistic concept of indexicality or social meaning in language as underlying theories The project involves searching for the lemmas paralyse, cripple, and wheelchair considering words within context and metaphorical uses. Using a model of appraisal and attitude for categorization of social meanings the chapter finds that negative ideology in relation to cripple and paralyse is dominant in both corpora and in metaphorical and non-metaphorical uses but that attitudes expressed in conversation can be more extreme. The word wheelchair has negative associations but can offer more practical or positive connotations.