Your morning cuppa and the language of disability: a study of usage of metaphors and attitudes in telugu news reporting

Abstract

Language is an important arbiter of meaning: it builds our understanding of the world and shapes our beliefs. What we know and what we believe about a particular phenomenon has a lot to do with the specific words used to describe and discuss it. Framing disability language in the vernacular media is a matter of contentious debate. Much abuse and harassment of disabled persons occurs as a matter of ―hate reporting‖ in journalism, which is as offensive as an abusive act or expression. The ―objective reporting‖ of journalism has been redirected and hijacked by the ―dominant meaning‖ of elite media in congruence with their ideology. The impact of journalism on framing language related to disability in the news media often negatively impacts the lives of people with disabilities. Ableist language frames are also responsible for creating, modifying and even changing societal and individual attitudes. The most commonly found Ableist vocabulary, often used metaphorically, such as „going blind‟, „turning a deaf ear‟, and so on in print media, lends meanings of deficit and worthlessness to disability. Such usage gives us ample evidence of conceptualizations and beliefs that inform the contemporary understanding of disability. Early insights from frame analysis of Telugu regional print media have prompted closer attention to the language of disability that filters audience perspectives about human differences. This paper investigates the dynamics of disability terminology in Telugu newspapers and focuses in the inadvertent and habitual usage of stigmatizing terminology in media, which allows us to identify the realities of a life of difference - physical, cognitive or cultural.