Internationalizing UDL: Addressing Biased Assumptions in Language Use

DR. ANN GAGNĒ

SENIOR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPER, ACCESSIBILITY & INCLUSION

BROCK UNIVERSITY

Land Acknowledgement And Positionality Statement

• Currently living on the traditional Land of Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
• Born and raised on traditional land of the Abitibiwini Aki in land covered by James Bay Northern Quebec agreement
• “our great standard of living is directly related to the resources and friendship of Indigenous people.”
• Important to remember positionality frames the awareness we want to build and support.

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Access Check

I encourage you to check, identify, and question your learning environment for any of the following and welcome comments if there are elements I can support to reduce barriers.

• Technology
• Virtual Space
• Resources
• Pace

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Learning Objectives

• Analyze biased language in teaching and learning communication
• Assess assumptions of linguistic and nationalistic positionality in teaching and learning design

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Outline

• UDL Consideration 2.4
• Ableist language
• Monolinguistic pedagogical assumptions examples
• How to build trust
• Next steps, reflecting on questions and prompts
• Questions

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UDL Consideration 2.4

• Address biases in the use of language and symbols
• “For example, people in the United States speak more than 350 languages, and the federal government does not designate any official language”
• “a hierarchy of language emerges with standard English at the top”

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What is Standard English?

• What is Standard English to you? Share in the chat
• “a hierarchy of language emerges with standard English at the top”
• “a hierarchy of language emerges with standard American English at the top”
• Standardized framings mean positionalities are lost and trust is broken
• You are not my community
• You do not understand my lived experience nor have the ability to empathize
• This ethnocentric view does harm and reinscribes colonial frameworks

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UDL Consideration 2.4 Some Suggestions

• Use closed captioning and sign languages when possible.
• Label classroom items in multiple languages. (Very K-12 Centric)
• Welcome the use of multiple languages and dialects for communication, including speaking and writing.
• Recognize that the goal of learning standard languages is not assimilation or monolingualism. (What is then?)
• Avoid using ableist language (expressions that use terms associated with disabilities as pejoratives).

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Ableism

• Ableism according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission
• “a belief system, analogous to racism, sexism or ageism, that sees persons with disabilities as being less worthy of respect and consideration, less able to contribute and participate, or of less inherent value than others. Ableism may be conscious or unconscious, and may be embedded in institutions, systems or the broader culture of a society.”

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Ableist Language

• As the previous definition suggests, ableist language is using language that may be consciously or unconsciously discriminatory towards disabled folk.

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Content Warning for Activating Language

• The next few slides and questions may include the use of terms that may be activating to participants
• If you require support or would like to discuss this further please feel free to reach out
• I hope we can approach this part of the conversation with open hearts and minds, and an acknowledgment that this is continuous, not checklist, work

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Reflecting on Ableist Language

• Take a few moments to reflect on some ableist language that you know is part of your everyday vocabulary?
• Why is it there?
• What can you say instead?
• If you cannot identify terms that’s okay that is why we are here in community together, to discuss!

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Making Clear What We Are Talking About

• In order to address this topic, we need to know what terms we are talking about
• This anonymous word cloud will collect some of the terms you’ve encountered
• Use Menti Code 2807774

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Intent VS Impact

• But I don’t mean it that way!
• But my disabled friend doesn’t find it offensive!
• Ableist language is a great way to have a conversation about the difference between intent and impact
• Some will hedge ableist language use in lack of harmful intent
• However, impact on others still remains regardless of intent

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What Could I Say Instead?

• Starts with an acknowledgement that disabilities are not adjectives
• Moves to an acknowledgment that there are so many other words that mean what you are trying to say that are not ableist
• Great resources available from Lydia X.Z. Brown

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Linguistically Biased Example 1

• This student is a Tier 3 student and so designing supports will need to take that into account.
• What assumptions are being made here?

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Linguistically Biased Example 2

• You are in a webinar where someone has asked for ASL interpretation. The organizers of the event respond that there are English CART captions for the event.
• What assumptions are being made here?

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Crisis of Trust: Language in Context

• The language we use is foundational to building trust
• Words have meaning!
• It is how we show up for yourself and others
• Academe has a fraught relationship to language
• Inclusion is a commitment to plain language over pretense
• Our language use has power embedded and excludes many

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Language in Context: Poll Exercise

• How many of these words in the poll do you know. Put the words you know better at the top and those you don’t at the bottom
• Use Menti Code 2807774

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Acknowledgement and Need for Trust

• Trust is about being seen
• Our language use are the ways that people are seen, that representations are built
• If the words keep representing the same people, the same structures, trust stops being a possibility
• There is no more space for acknowledging different learners

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Bringing Trust to Our Spaces, Using 2.4 for Good

• Care
• Sincerity
• Reliability
• Competence (Feltman, 2024)

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• Address biases in the use of language and symbols

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Reflective Prompts

• Is this something only someone in the United States would know?
• What decisions am I making about spelling conventions?
• What sort of acronyms am I assuming people will know?
• What kind of exemplars am I using in the course?
• Is this an ableist word or phraseology?
• Others? What other questions would you ask?

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Questions?

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References

• Brown, L.X.Z. (2023). Ableism/Language. Autistic Hoya.com
• Feltman, C. (2024). The Thin Book of Trust: An Essential Primer for Building Trust at Work. 3^rd Ed. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
• Novic, S. (2021, April 5). The Harmful Ableist Language You Unknowingly Use. BBC.com
• Ravishankar, R. A. (2020, December 15). Why You Need to Stop Using These Words and Phrases. Harvard Business Review.
• Withers, A.J. (n.d.) What you Said, What you Meant to Say. Still My Revolution.

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Thank you!

• Website: anngagne.ca
• Brock Email: agagne3@brocku.ca
• On LinkedIn
• On Mastodon: @anngagne@mastodon.social

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