Safely in America, young Fritz savors the simple joy of asking a policeman directions: "Only weeks before, a man in uniform had been a figure of dread to me, but this New York cop, grasping my linguistic disability, answered me helpfully in fragments of Yiddish and German".
Though Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter is a work of fiction, members of several minoritized communities continue to suffer the sting of metaphoric stigmata forced onto their skin, birth sex, sexual and gender identities and expressions, religious beliefs and affiliations, countries of origin and linguistic backgrounds, disabilities, ages, and so on.
The deaf, DasGupta points out, consider themselves a linguistic community; disability is a frame others impose on them.
It calls on governments to prioritise the needs of the most marginalised children – the poor, girls, ethnic and linguistic minorities, children with disabilities and those living in conflict zones.
One of the challenges encountered in Cambodia pertained to translating assessment instruments from English to Khmer, and especially finding linguistic equivalents for the concepts of impairment and disability.
Evidence shows that the most disadvantaged children – their disadvantage due to poverty, ethnic and linguistic minority status, gender discrimination, remoteness, disability, violence, and HIV/AIDS status – experience the most dramatic gains from good quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programs.
Among the most excluded are children with disabilities, children from ethnic and linguistic minorities, those from the poorest families, from rural areas, from migrant families and working children.
Among the most voiceless in the region are children with disabilities, children from ethnic and linguistic minorities, from the poorest families, from rural areas, from migrant families and working children.
Early evaluation and prevention of hearing impairment in childhood are essential, because hearing impairment can have severe adverse effects on speech, behavior, linguistic understanding, and language acquisition, contributing to global disability and mortality.
Focusing instead on disability, Nordenfelt then makes a linguistic move.
In recognition of this fact, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is developing additional curriculum to promote learning outcomes for students with disabilities, and/or to assist students from different linguistic and learning backgrounds (ACARA [2013]).
