The Power of Naming: Discursive Politics From the Perspective of Expertise in an Intellectual Disability Advocacy Field.

This article considers how name change comes about by examining fieldwide debates among actors such as professionals and activists. Analysing a range of primary qualitative materials produced by leading US organisations over a 75-year period, it focuses on a case from the disability advocacy field in several shifts from older terms to more recent 'intellectual disability' (ID) language in the United States. As opposed to framing these changes solely as matters of identity politics or destigmatisation, I argue that these naming politics can be better historically contextualised as struggles fundamentally tied to organised lay/professional expertise and field position. Although many professionals resisted proposed changes as counterproductive, insurgent activists repeatedly marshalled their own claims to expertise surrounding the disability experience and eventually successfully pushed for the replacement of previously legitimate diagnostic terminology. This recognition of expertise, however, does not translate to equal footing among stakeholders but varies by timing and issue context. To highlight this, I differentiate between traditional and emergent 'expert identity' and extent of 'expert control'. I suggest such a perspective might be applied to a range of fields where similar disputes over language have come to occupy significant attention.