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From: Ken St. Louis
Date: 11 Oct 2006
Time: 10:08:04 -0500
Remote Name: 157.182.15.42
Dear Nicole, Good questions. In my experience, adults are more concerned about terminology, but maybe that is because children have not been given a chance to choose a name. Relative to both your first and second questions, the following is a section of the paper I deleted in the interest of space. "Referring to some of the STUTT-L posts, several graduate students [Note: Some of them were deleted.] apparently gleaned that it would be best to ask our clients how they would like to be labeled. I believe this is another sad commentary on this linguistic mess we have inherited. Imagine going to a doctor with heart problems and finding out that the doctor was almost embarrassed to tell us what the diagnosis is because the term, a “heart attack” had recently been called into questions by a few victims. It seems to me the term, “heart attack” has been accepted for centuries by doctors, patients, and the public, as an objective, easily understood way of talking about what happened. No question that it is negative, but because a heart attack is serious business, not because of the words used to name it. I'd rather my doctor, or my speech-language pathologist, just use a term and not feel any need to apologize for it." This pretty much sums up my answer to your question. Ken