Staff Perspective: Choosing Your Words Carefully - APA’s Updated Inclusive Language Guide is an Important Resource for Psychologists
As the program evaluator at the Center for Deployment Psychology, I am privy to the feedback we collect from our training participants across a variety of areas and indices related to our workshops. One area that tends to solicit particularly strong reactions is the request for feedback on how well diversity is represented in our content and presentations. One frequently-cited area for both recognition and for improvement is the language that is used in our materials and by our presenters. At CDP, we continue to strive to update our training content to be equitable and inclusive, so I am always on the lookout for a good resource to inform content development and revisions.
One such resource is the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Inclusive Language Guide, recently released in an updated second edition (2023) that is available on the APA website as text and a PDF download. While it follows the same format as the original guide, the updated version is nearly twice as long (2nd edition: 51 pages, 1st edition: 27 pages) and incorporates significant new contributions from both within and outside of APA and the field of psychology. New to the second edition is a more in-depth examination of topics like gender-inclusive pregnancy-related language, neurodiversity, religious discrimination, and weight stigma.
The portion of the guide devoted to the use of inclusive language in writing provides information on general terms related to equity and power, guidance on person-first and identity-first language, and identity-related terms. For relevant terms and concepts, the authors share information on definitions, common usage, and derivation, often with linked references and resources for additional information. While the stated purpose of the information in this section of the guide is to inform written products, the information it contains is also relevant to a variety of areas within the field and practice of psychology, including clinical and social interactions as well as research design and practices.
The latter portion of the guide provides information and strategies for avoiding microaggressions in conversation with discussions of culturally appropriative and pejorative language, violent language, and language that doesn’t say what we mean. Although this section is much shorter than the guidance intended for written products, it includes very helpful information on common expressions and terminology that many may not recognize as problematic. Once again, the guide provides relevant context for the identified terms, including substantial information on the derivation of the term and the populations to whom it is harmful or hurtful. This section in particular would benefit from an expansion in future editions. For example, in the section on language that doesn’t say what we mean, APA highlights only two areas: terminology related to suicide and terms used to describe certain types of sexual assault.
With its ease of accessibility and breadth of coverage, the APA Inclusive Language Guide (2nd ed.) is a useful companion to the bias-free language guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). It is a “must-bookmark” resource for anyone in the field of psychology and a great starting point for consideration of our use of language in both personal and professional settings.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenny Phillips, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Evaluation for the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD.
References:
American Psychological Association (2023). Inclusive language guidelines (2nd ed.). https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi. org/10.1037/0000165-000
As the program evaluator at the Center for Deployment Psychology, I am privy to the feedback we collect from our training participants across a variety of areas and indices related to our workshops. One area that tends to solicit particularly strong reactions is the request for feedback on how well diversity is represented in our content and presentations. One frequently-cited area for both recognition and for improvement is the language that is used in our materials and by our presenters. At CDP, we continue to strive to update our training content to be equitable and inclusive, so I am always on the lookout for a good resource to inform content development and revisions.
One such resource is the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Inclusive Language Guide, recently released in an updated second edition (2023) that is available on the APA website as text and a PDF download. While it follows the same format as the original guide, the updated version is nearly twice as long (2nd edition: 51 pages, 1st edition: 27 pages) and incorporates significant new contributions from both within and outside of APA and the field of psychology. New to the second edition is a more in-depth examination of topics like gender-inclusive pregnancy-related language, neurodiversity, religious discrimination, and weight stigma.
The portion of the guide devoted to the use of inclusive language in writing provides information on general terms related to equity and power, guidance on person-first and identity-first language, and identity-related terms. For relevant terms and concepts, the authors share information on definitions, common usage, and derivation, often with linked references and resources for additional information. While the stated purpose of the information in this section of the guide is to inform written products, the information it contains is also relevant to a variety of areas within the field and practice of psychology, including clinical and social interactions as well as research design and practices.
The latter portion of the guide provides information and strategies for avoiding microaggressions in conversation with discussions of culturally appropriative and pejorative language, violent language, and language that doesn’t say what we mean. Although this section is much shorter than the guidance intended for written products, it includes very helpful information on common expressions and terminology that many may not recognize as problematic. Once again, the guide provides relevant context for the identified terms, including substantial information on the derivation of the term and the populations to whom it is harmful or hurtful. This section in particular would benefit from an expansion in future editions. For example, in the section on language that doesn’t say what we mean, APA highlights only two areas: terminology related to suicide and terms used to describe certain types of sexual assault.
With its ease of accessibility and breadth of coverage, the APA Inclusive Language Guide (2nd ed.) is a useful companion to the bias-free language guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). It is a “must-bookmark” resource for anyone in the field of psychology and a great starting point for consideration of our use of language in both personal and professional settings.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Jenny Phillips, Ph.D., is the Assistant Director of Evaluation for the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP) at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD.
References:
American Psychological Association (2023). Inclusive language guidelines (2nd ed.). https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi. org/10.1037/0000165-000