The Power of Language

As seen in the Consultant Connection November 2015 Issue

submitted by: Lori Earnhart, Director of Sales and Marketing, ICP, Inc.

Language plays a crucial role in shaping the culture of aging and aging services in our society. The words we use when talking to and about older persons denote how they are valued, what is expected of them, and where they stand with respect to the speaker. What a person is called creates expectations about their behavior and sets the limits on how much growth and individual identity is deemed possible by those who serve them. The impact of new language is seen as a way of interacting that goes deeper into the core of peoples’ life experience. 

The new language will have a positive effect on how elders feel about themselves, how they think, and how functionally able they can be in daily life. Words do indeed make worlds. Part of transforming long-term care practice is finding new words to describe staff, programs, and the industry itself. The language of long-term care belongs to all of us—not only the “us” who work in this field but, at least as importantly, the elders and others with disabilities who require our services, their families, and the public.