Googlewhacked “autistic person” versus “person with autism”

[erinptah]

A random conversation got me curious about the two phrases, and, wow:

So “autistic person” is in use since autism-as-a-diagnosis was coined, and “person with autism” comes along a few decades later. It immediately catches on, they’re about equally popular by the late ’80s, and as discussion of autism steadily increases over the decades after that, both phrases get more common at roughly the same rate.

But then! In the mid-2000s, something shifts, The use of “autistic person” takes a sudden plunge. Opinion pieces are going around that explain how “person with autism” is the less-offensive term, and the conversation is taking it to heart.

And then, in the early 2010s, something shifts again. Collective wisdom decides that, actually, “autistic person” is fine? Maybe that’s the less-offensive term, even?

It shoots back up in popularity. By the late 2010s, they’re getting close to the same usage again.

There’s a similar dip-and-then-rise with the usage of “autistic people” as compared to “people with autism”, but the rise is even more dramatic. The term “autistic people” has been dramatically less popular since the ’90s, until it shoots upward to outpace “people with autism” by 2019:

(Google’s data only goes up to 2019. Too bad, I’d be really curious to see what the lines do in the next 4 years.)

This fits my anecdotal experience — for a while people were enthusiastically promoting “people with autism” as the superior term, and now the same amount of enthusiasm is behind “autistic people” — but I wasn’t actually expecting the hard data to be so clear about it.

The arguments I remember were grammar-based. And it’s not like the basics of English grammar have changed.

Wonder what did?

(Bonus: there’s no similar pattern for “people with disabilities” versus “disabled people”. The “with” construction also had its original rise in popularity in the late ’80s, and use of both phrases has gone up and down at similar rates since then, with “people with disabilities” being consistently, moderately more popular. No sign of “disabled people” making a dramatic comeback.)