sped = special ed

[Amy West]

On 7/1/10 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:26:35 +0000
> From:    Charles C Doyle<cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: sped = special ed
>
> Isn't the idea simply that those regarded as "smart" in one group might appear "dumb" in another group?
>
> In Georgia in the early 1980s, my elementary-school-aged son and his peers commonly employed the insult "You L.D.!"  "L.D." meant 'learning disabled' in the public-education parlance of the day.  There we see the common process of a euphemism's developing into a disparagement.
>
> --Charlie
>

And "retarded" has undergone this pejoration as well, so that the RI and
MA departments of mental retardation have recently changed their names.

And of course before that "idiot" and "moron" went through a similar
change. (I'm assuming that those two terms were fairly neutral when used
in law and psychology and then became pejorative. There is always the
possibility that they were pejorative before being adopted as the
professional terms.)

I haven't heard "LD" used pejoratively, but I'm not surprised to hear of it.

--
---Amy West

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