Re: developmentallly delayed

On Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:55:37 +0100, Frederick Williams
<frederick.williams2@tesco.net> wrote:

>mm wrote:
>>
>> In an episode of Law and Order from last winter, there is a boy who
>> isn't normal mentally.  The police in private call him retarded. His
>> father calls him slow, and his mother says "Wake up, darling, he is
>> *developmentally delayed*."  She says this with scorn and passion,
>> like it is so much worse than slow,   Actually, it's almost the same
>> as slow.  How come she doesn't notice that?
>>
>> It is the same or almost the same as retarded, and none are really
>> accurate or complete in this case, because he's not merely delayed or
>> progressing at a slow speed (slow, retarded), he's stopped.
>>
>> Ahd the mother says "develpmentally delayed" like it's a mean vulgar
>> phrase, when iiuc it is intended to be the nice phrase.
>>
>> Amazing how people relate to words.
>
>I'm not familiar with Law and Order but is the mother sneering at the
>"political correctness" of "developmentally delayed"?

No.  She was embracing the phrase, and wanting her husband to come to
grips with reality, that his son wasn't just slow, but in the sternest
of voices, developmentally delayed. Even though I agreed with Ray that
slow might be worse, really, in practice, they're pretty much the same
thing.  Different people may use different words, but the people
described by one of these are the same people described by the other,
when different people are doing the describing.   In fact her husband
may well have felt that slow and D-D were the same thing. It depends
on how slow he thought he was. (The kid had graduated high school iirc
and had a job at a fast food place, mostly cleaning up.)

That's why the scene was so strange.   She thought "slow" didn't
capture the seriousness of the son's problem, when the literal meaning
of developmentally delayed is so weak, it doesn't capture it either.
It's only that she's stripped "d-d" of its niceness that she thinks
its worse.

I don't know enough biology to know how often people who are slow, or
retarded, or delayed continue to progress and catch up at least
partially to those who develop at nomral speeds. I'm an optimist, sort
of, so I can't help thinking that some do**.  So I can'd call D-D a
euphemism, if even some catch up, even partially. It's not a euphemism
if it literally describes a situation; it's just the most hopeful
choice of words (as is slow and retarded. Non-hopeful and harsh words
are words like dummy, moron, idiot, and even retard, which afaik when
used as a noun is never used hopefully or optimistically.)

**I don't know any retarded people who grew out of that, but I have
the impression that some poor people who grew up without much
education or a broad vocabulary, continue to increase their vocabulary
even into their 60's*** so that their lack of education decades
earlier can't be discerned.   And that mistakes in grammar and syntax
made well into their 20's or later can disappear as they hang around
with people who don't make those mistakes.   This should really be a
separate thread, but I'm here now.

***Or older than 60's but I don't know anyone older.

She used D-D as if it were worse than being slow.  Or maybe, as if d-d
really described the situation, when in this case it was really
inadequate, given that he was 25 or 30, probably was never going to
catch up at all from whatever delay he had had, and had recently
killed someone who got him angry because she said something he didn't
like.  (I think she called him some synonym for slow.)  I didnt' want
to get into the crime part, because in writing that part they probably
have different goals from writing the part dealing with his slowness.

I guess my point is that the nicest phrases can be used harshly or
insultingly, and, though I don't think it's shown here, the harshest
phrases can probably be used warmly.  (As in a very small number of
nicknames)
--
Posters should say where they live, and for which
area they are asking questions. I have lived in
Western Pa.  10 years
Indianapolis 10 years
Chicago       6 years
Brooklyn, NY 12 years
Baltimore    26 years
[ Auf dieses Posting antworten ]