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SOCIAL MODEL IN LANGUAGE REPRESENTATIONS OF A PERSON WITH DISABILITY IN RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN MASS MEDIA DISCOURSE // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2017. Issue 6 (183). P. 25-31

There isn’t an aspect of social policy or experience that isn’t deeply caught up in disability issues. Disability is one of the great issues, like race, class and gender. Attitudes, beliefs, and misconceptions of society constitute a major barrier for people with disabilities. Attitude change can follow on heightened awareness, increased contact, and increased meaningful communication between disabled and non-disabled people. Although personal interaction is the most effective medium for conveying the personal experience of disability, the mass media can be an effective vehicle for bringing about greater understanding, and a consequent gradual change in public perceptions of people with disabilities. Language reflects the world around us and also constitutes the ways we understand and experience it. One aspect of the study on disability involves examining the words we use and the ways in which language represents persons and beliefs about them. The language used to talk about disability and disabled persons has changed over time. History, theory, advocacy, politics, and culture influence how disability is expressed and represented. The emergence of new paradigms of disability, the disability rights movement and disability studies, and other changes in culture bring attention to the ways that we talk about and depict disability. Examining varied perspectives on disability reveals considerable variation in language related to disability and how it is regarded. The article is devoted to the cognitive and discursive, contextual analysis of the disability terms based on the Internet articles of the Russian and American magazines, journals and newspapers: AiF, Rossiyskaya gazeta, Moskovskiy Komsomolets, lenta.ru; New York Times, National Geographic, Time, People, Scientific American, Fortune.

Keywords: social model, disability, disabled, disability discourse, disability terms