Simi Linton’s “Reassigning Meaning” examines the word disabled and various other words that correspond with that categorization. Linton perceives that the word disabled separates the dominant group and the minority. She is right in saying this, because the word disabled implies different, or strange. Linton breaks down the word by its prefix –dis. This prefix, she describes, takes it root from Latin meaning apart or asunder. Automatically this establishes a relationship of separation. She believes that it is a word that eases the mind of the dominant group so much as to almost

“Disabled” is a word. Unfortunately it has turned into something more, something that offends the people who are referred to as disabled. The reason that disabled people suffer so much, internally, is because of their word. Because, from the day that they are born they are taught that something is wrong with them and that something has rendered them disabled meaning apart from the normal group. It excommunicates them into their own community, so all they have is their peers.

In the medieval time period, a disability was looked upon as something that you had brought upon yourself. Therefore you were excommunicated from society, because it was God’s will that you were disabled. That is how culture began to perceive the disabled, as not good enough for God, so not good enough for us. This is obviously an extreme point of view that is not too common in contemporary civilization, but from this point of view derived what society uses today. It acknowledges the disabled community but it does not want to get too close. As long as that line of mental comfortability exists, they feel all right about themselves, and in today’s society that is acceptable behavior. That is where all the expressions for the disabled come from, from minds t

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