People-first language
form of linguistic prescriptivism
People-first language or person-first language is the practice of distancing a person from a trait or condition they have by preferring phrases such as "a person with diabetes", "people experiencing homelessness", and "people with substance use disorders" as opposed to identity-first language like "diabetic people", "homeless people", and "substance abusers".
As a form of disability etiquette, the practice is intended to avoid unconsciously stigmatizing or dehumanizing people with chronic illnesses or disabilities, by treating them as a secondary characteristics to their personhood rather than an essential or subsuming component of their identity.
Some organizations have adopted style guidelines preferring or requiring person-first language when writing about disability, though some disabled communities have a majority or otherwise statistically significant preference for identity-first language, including the Deaf, blind, and autistic communities. APA style recommends using either identity-first or person-first language as appropriate for the community or individual being discussed. Phrases like "disabled person", "Deaf person", and "blind person" are generally accepted and often preferred.
Definition
People-first language is a type of linguistic prescription. It aims to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with disabilities and is sometimes referred to (for example, by NHS England's style guide) as a type of disability etiquette. People-first language can also be applied to any group that is defined by a condition rather than as a people: for example, "those that are homeless" rather than "the homeless."
Rather than using labels to define individuals with a health issue, people-first language uses terminology that describes individuals as being diagnosed with an illness or disorder. People-first language puts the person before the diagnosis and describes what the person has, not what the person is.
The basic idea is to use a sentence structure that names the person first and the condition second, for example, "people with disabilities" rather than "disabled people" or "disabled," to emphasize that they are people first.
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This entry incorporates text from “People-first language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.