LAW

Essay on a Case Study of Resisting Disability Epithets

Note: See Appendix For Executive Summary

Essay on a Case Study of Resisting Disability Epithets

Introduction

Stacy got seriously emotional on usage of epithets at workplace when their colleagues call themselves or their customers retarded. The reason for Stacy to get so much agitated is because she is mother of 6-month-old boy who was born with Down syndrome and dealing with intellectual disability. Stacy made several attempts to communicate and pursue that usage of such words at workplace really hurt her emotions being mother of child having subnormal intelligence. Despite these several attempts, Stacy is still experiencing lot of epithets and other retarded bullying by her co-workers at the workplace.

Analysis of the Issue

Epithet

Epithet can be defined as repetition and persistence of certain form offensive language. The epithet is the form of bullying which includes making use of such comments that is offensive as well abusive language. The epithet occurs in varied forms including sexually inappropriate language, inappropriate and low moral language and offensive jokes and put-downs such as usage of “stupid”, “jerk” and “retard” (Lewis, 2006b). The epithet also takes form of using some inappropriate racial epithets and comments which describe intellectually disability of mental disabled persons. According to researchers, Allen et al., (2007), that large number of people did not consider usage of epithet as an offensive. They consider it rather as form of joking and banter. These researchers found in their study that many people in workplace and especially the children in schools are highly vulnerable of bullying and epithet from their fellows (Allen et al., 2007). Moreover, Lewis (2000) found that epithet can seriously hurt the emotions of person who are already struggling with their natural disabilities. Hence, there research clarifies that no amount of reasoning and justification such as “I'm only joking” or “Please don't mind, I didn't say it to offend anyone” are acceptable and justified for offensive language (Lewis, 2000).

Communication Climate at Hermit Life and Auto

The usages of epithets and bullying in workplace create negative and unpleasant working environment for people who gets upset by those offensive words directly or indirectly. Lewis et al., (2006) found that employees these days working in many organizations use certain form of communication which is full of epithets. The findings of Lewis et al., (2006) is justifying the similar kind of communication climate as observed in Hermit Life and Auto, where employees use retard and other offensive language for themselves and for their customers. Due to this Stacy is facing emotional problems especially with usage of word “retard” which ignites the emotions full of anger of mother inside of 6-months-old child. The communication climate is so worsening, that it is not only part of informal communication but employees also use words such as retard in their formal presentations at speech during company's meeting. The employees seem to be carefree in the usage of offensive words in their language, which multiplies the problem across the whole ...