Labels and lingo in epilepsy: A response to Dr Hatcher

Dr Hatcher expresses concern about the use of the abbreviation ‘PWE’ rather than the phrase ‘person with epilepsy’, which he considers an offensive and stigmatising practice. As a researcher on stigma, I have some sympathy with Dr Hatcher’s position – to be abbreviated is a state unlikely to be welcomed by any of us, whether we have epilepsy or any other condition of human being. Dr Hatcher makes the point that abbreviations and acronyms are common parlance in the present day – and certainly, I have been present in many meetings where to any ‘outsider’ the language, steeped in such devices, must seem quite confounding. However, I would suggest that the use of what Frank Tannenbaum, the so-called ‘grandfather’ of labelling theory, referred to as ‘tagging’ – the tag in this instance being ‘PWE’ – is not necessarily intended to erode the sense of identity of people who have epilepsy. Dr Hatcher cites two recently published articles – the one by Schachter which refers to people with epilepsy as ‘PWE’ on 34 occasions; the other by Farghaly et al. not at all. The habit of abbreviating the terms, ‘person with epilepsy’ or ‘people with epilepsy’ has, I would suggest, been adopted by academic journals for the purposes of nothing more aggressive than the desire to save print space – the use of such abbreviations seeming to be a pragmatic response to the exigencies of journal word counts and the often highly restricted limitations on space imposed by publishers. In the case of Schachter’s article, for example, 34 words would have become over 100 in an unabbreviated version. In my own recent paper, I and my co-authors used the abbreviation ‘PWE’ 14 times; along with the abbreviations, QOL (for ‘quality of life’) 137 times and HRQOL (for ‘health-related quality of life’) 19 times and WHO (World Health Organisation) four times – a total saving of around 400 words (i.e. 5% of the length) across an article of just over 8000 words. Though these illustrations of the habit of abbreviation are in no way a defence of the practice Dr Hatcher abhors, they are offered as a simple explanation for its use. However, it must be also acknowledged that in the brave new world of on-line publishing, word limits are set to become a thing of the past. The American Psychological Association suggests that abbreviations can help to maximise clarity in scientific writing, but also advises that they be used sparingly. All that said, Dr Hatcher is, I think, to be thanked for challenging what has become publication custom and practice. Though Tannenbaum wrote about labelling theory in the context of criminology, sociologists have also devoted much study time to