Social Sustainability and Transparency: A Study of Person-first and Identity-first Language in Metropolitan Transportation Authority Communication

Social sustainability emphasizes the importance of maintaining long-term well-being and cohesion of communities by fostering environments where individuals from diverse backgrounds can be included by interacting and developing (Elkington, 1997; Davidson, 2010). However, it remains an ever-evolving and loosely defined concept, often discussed in relation to the more widely studied environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, fostering social sustainability is a key focus for large metropolitan areas where various social groups have to coexist. In this regard, public transportation providers, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York, serve as vital mediators of social sustainability by enhancing cohesion among diverse communities, and facilitating access to shared public spaces. This applies not only to the services offered by the transit provider, but also their communication practices, which have recently incorporated participatory web tools, specifically social media, to showcase their core values and communicate directly with users, thereby enhancing transparency and trust (Criado et al., 2013; Song & Lee 2016). Social sustainability efforts, like those aimed at fostering inclusion and diversity, can be signaled by the use of Person-First Language, in which the condition of the person is placed after the head noun in a prepositional phrase or relative clause, or by Identity-First Language, which places the condition before the noun (Price, 2022). Therefore, through a corpus-assisted analysis of Instagram posts, the study analyzes the use of these two strategies to understand how disability, gender, and other markers of diversity are represented on the MTA social media. Results reveal that the MTA predominantly employs Person-First Language over Identity-First Language, reflecting their commitment to social sustainability. Additionally, findings are meant to highlight how this preference can contribute to fostering communicative transparency, ensuring that accessibility policies and inclusion efforts are clearly conveyed to the public.