Bygone Choices?

 Everywhere I look or read, I get embroiled in linguistic discourse on acceptable terms used to refer to autistic people. 

I have written many times on this blog that a change in wordage when referring to autistic people is needed. It is a core issue for me, as language shape thoughts and attitudes towards those deemed Other within society. Otherment is due to linguistic difference and already marginalized people are more marginalized by the words that are applied. 

Autist, to my mind, carries too much historical weight to be used in polite conversation. The term itself was coined in 1911 by Swiss psychologist Eugen Bleuler, who derived it from Greek autos ‘self’, referring to schizophrenia in the vernacular of the time. In nearly the century since Ukranian pediatrician Grunya Sukhareva wrote of autism (1925), much has been attempted to better the lives of the autistic population. At least in theory. Seldom are autistic people herded into mental institutions; they instead live in care homes and are offered one-size-fits-all accommodations, or none at all. Seldom are autistic people refered to as idiots; they are infantilized and treated as less than. Seldom are autistic people abandoned; they are at risk of being killed by bigots or those in power. Yet can change be made in shifting words?

Autist carries with it that history and attitude of neglect, shame and stigma, even when used in Norwegian as an empowering word. It is used frequently and favorably, by everyone from special education teachers to autistic authors and people themselves. The former might be forgiven as not knowing better, but the latter, with some history, ought to at least be looking to better the linguistic landscape. This stance divides no blame; it simply empowers those long disempowered to take charge of their own linguistic future.

Reading autistic literature, I seldom encounter the word autist used positively, unless the author is of Scandinavian origin. I do not fault the individual, but the neuronormate society which places allism and neurotypicality as the ideal neurotype, while tacitly admitting the autistic presence as long as it conforms to allistic comforts and sensibilities. That includes accepting and using the term autist to refer to themselves. An admission of submitting to the Janteic way of behavior so prevalent in Scandinavia; don't be different, assimilate and keep your head down. Autist seems to be a neutral current way of referring to the condition, despite the known historical medicalization and infantilization. 

Linguistically, the term autist refers to a sense of one's inner, rather than outer, world. Though derived from Greek, it mixes a Latin ending, making it phonologically odd. It also shares that ending with words like racist, terrorist, fetishist, cultist and motorist, landing it in the loanword category of Norwegian. Phonoaesthetically, the word has an abrupt ending, making it sound curt. It has historically been used about people, not by them, both medically and stigmatizingly. Preserving then the context of the inner world, I propose a new word family to encompass the autistic experience, familiar and euphonic to Norwegian (and indeed Scandinavian) mouths. 

Seeing how Norwegian has borrowed the concept of being queer (være skeiv, skeivhet), I propose a similar coinage. We have the adjective weird, descending from Old English wyrd, meaning tied to fate. It has already somewhat been reclaimed in pop culture. In Norwegian, we have the adjective sær (weird, quaint, mystical, odd, peculiar, strange) from Old Norse sér, dative case of the reflexive pronoun sik. Building on my previous coinage evnehets (ableism; Størmer, 2024), I want to continue on this road. While I might speak of choices made by other voices long ago, my desire is earnest in righting how we are spoken of and how we speak of ourselves. The coinage has to have something to do with the self, one's own and an inherent weirdness or eccentricity of the mind, a unique way of seeing the world. Be that not our strength? 

If any of my readership have any suggestions, I welcome them sooner rather than later. Let the words come, in this tongue or others!