Who you are or what you have: Historical trends in identity-first and person-first language in books and news media
- 1Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- 2School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
Abstract
Whether people experiencing mental ill health or disability should be referred to using person-first (e.g., “person with autism”) or identity-first (e.g., “autistic person”) terminology is an ongoing subject of debate. The present study conducted the most comprehensive investigation to date of historical trends in the use of the two kinds of terms, evaluating the frequency of “X person/people” relative to “person/people with X” expressions for a collection of mental health, disability, and other conditions in Google Books (1980–2019) and the News on the Web corpus (2010–2025). Consistent with predictions, person-first language became more popular from 1980 onward, but this trend was counteracted by a more recent swing toward identity-first language, resulting in a curvilinear trend. Identity-first language was also more prevalent in singular than in plural expressions. Beyond these broad trends, there was substantial diversity in terminological preferences and trends across conditions. Implications are discussed.
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BibTeX
@article{kang2026what,
title = {{Who you are or what you have: Historical trends in identity-first and person-first language in books and news media}},
author = {Jemima Kang and Naomi Baes and Alsa Wu and Nick Haslam},
journal = {PLOS Mental Health},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pmen.0000684},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000684},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Who you are or what you have: Historical trends in identity-first and person-first language in books and news media
AU - Jemima Kang
AU - Naomi Baes
AU - Alsa Wu
AU - Nick Haslam
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
JO - PLOS Mental Health
DO - 10.1371/journal.pmen.0000684
UR - https://journals.plos.org/mentalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmen.0000684
AB - Whether people experiencing mental ill health or disability should be referred to using person-first (e.g., “person with autism”) or identity-first (e.g., “autistic person”) terminology is an ongoing subject of debate. The present study conducted the most comprehensive investigation to date of historical trends in the use of the two kinds of terms, evaluating the frequency of “X person/people” relative to “person/people with X” expressions for a collection of mental health, disability, and other conditions in Google Books (1980–2019) and the News on the Web corpus (2010–2025). Consistent with predictions, person-first language became more popular from 1980 onward, but this trend was counteracted by a more recent swing toward identity-first language, resulting in a curvilinear trend. Identity-first language was also more prevalent in singular than in plural expressions. Beyond these broad trends, there was substantial diversity in terminological preferences and trends across conditions. Implications are discussed.
SN - 2837-8156
ER -