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Article published In: Spanish in Context
Vol. 22:3 (2025) ► pp.487–516

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Linguistic labels of disabled people in Colombian news outlets

An exploratory corpus-based study

ORCiD logo with link | University of New Brunswick Saint John
ORCiD logo with link | University of North Carolina at Charlotte
ORCiD logo with link | University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Published online: 19 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sic.24001.gar
Abstract
Disability can be understood as a (subtle) physical and/or mental condition, or as a representation of legal, medical, and media discourses that construct non-normative bodies as deviant. Language plays an essential role in the construction of disability through, for example, the use of linguistic labeling and naming practices (i.e., “disabled person”, “handicapped”, etc.). These linguistic practices have not been fully explored in Colombian media and it remains critical to (a) identify labels of how news outlets represent this underserved community based on ideological preferences, and (b) investigate the use of person-first language (i.e., person with disabilities) vs. identity-first language (i.e., disabled person). Thus, this exploratory study aims at filling this gap by using a corpus-based approach with a large collection of Colombian news articles. Findings indicate that, unlike the press in English, Colombian media recurrently opts for person-first naming, with a relatively higher occurrence in the left-leaning press as compared to conservative-leaning outlets.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies
    • 2.1Linguistic labeling of disabled individuals
    • 2.2Representing disabled individuals in news outlets
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Corpus description and compilation
    • 4.2Procedure and design
  • 5.Results: Frequencies, concordances and collocations
    • 5.1Frequencies in disability-related labels in Colombian news outlets
    • 5.2Collocations in disability-related terms
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Disclosure statement
  • Note
  • References
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