Who you are or what you have: Historical trends in identity-first and person-first language in books and news media

Whether people experiencing mental ill health or disability should be referred to using person-first (e.g., “person with autism”) or identity-first (e.g., “autistic person”) terminology is an ongoing subject of debate. The present study conducted the most comprehensive investigation to date of historical trends in the use of the two kinds of terms, evaluating the frequency of “X person/people” relative to “person/people with X” expressions for a collection of mental health, disability, and other conditions in Google Books (1980–2019) and the News on the Web corpus (2010–2025). Consistent with predictions, person-first language became more popular from 1980 onward, but this trend was counteracted by a more recent swing toward identity-first language, resulting in a curvilinear trend. Identity-first language was also more prevalent in singular than in plural expressions. Beyond these broad trends, there was substantial diversity in terminological preferences and trends across conditions. Implications are discussed.