Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America invites submissions for a special issue on “Dictionaries and Disability: Ideologies, Definitions, and Depictions.”
Dictionaries are repositories of the social norms and expectations that are encoded into our daily discourse and of our historical understanding of said social norms and expectations. This makes them an ideal source for analysis of the topic of disability studies whose focus, broadly conceived, is on people whose bodies or minds challenge those norms and expectations. Advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities has resulted in landmark legislation and action that calls on institutions, including print and online dictionaries, to be aware of how they are accessed and used by people with disabilities. Moreover, with the advent of social media, disabilities are often at the fore of public imagination. For example, popular conversations challenge how disabilities have been assessed, diagnosed, and discussed. Many of these conversations originated in academia but were appropriated later by self-advocates.
In this special issue of Dictionaries, we invite contributors to submit abstracts for journal articles on any area of disability studies as it relates to dictionaries or other reference works such as glossaries, encyclopedias, and thesauri in any language(s).
Topics may include but are not limited to the following:
- Synchronic or diachronic analyses of disability vocabulary
- Portrayals of disabled people, medical devices (e.g. prosthetics), or disabilities
themselves in any part of dictionaries - Making dictionaries accessible
- History of sign language or braille dictionaries
- Disability terms in specialized dictionaries—e.g., legal, medical, governmental,
insurance - Histories of people with disabilities involved in the compilation of dictionaries
The social factors that exacerbate the effects of these impairments and differences have led some to challenge the very nature of disability and by extension, the usefulness of the term disability. We understand that models that treat disability (e.g., ASD, Deafness) as deficit rather than difference, as inherently medical, or as a reflection of normativity have come under fire. We believe that perspectives that challenge the fundamental notions of this theme belong in this special issue.
This volume is being guest edited by Dr. Jason F. Siegel at The University of the West Indies (jason.siegel@cavehill.uwi.edu) and Dr. Rebecca Shapiro at City University of New York (rshapiro@citytech.cuny.edu).
Please send abstracts of 250 words and a brief biography for consideration by December 31, 2024.
Authors will be informed whether their abstracts are successful in January 2025. Authors of successful abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts (6,000–10,000 words) for review by June 1, 2025. The review process will be completed by September 2025, and revision deadlines will be in early 2026, resulting in publication in volume 47, issue 1 of Dictionaries (spring–summer 2027).