ABSTRACT

In the past four years, Australia has undergone a major change in the way it funds supports and services for people living with disability. Part of this change has, of course, occurred in the discourse of disability, and the emergence of the term “support” rather than “care” has been a feature of this discursive shift. In this paper we used aspects of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory to analyse how the term “support” is used in a seven key policy and program documents related to disability written over a ten-year period. We aim to understand what is meant by the term “support” and how its meaning is built up, deepened and made more complex over time through its use in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme. The findings reveal that the meaning of support is relatively flexible, and as such develops meaning and complexity over time, reflecting a shift from a values and rights-based understanding of the concept to the operationalisation of the term in policy and practice.

摘要

在过去四年中，澳大利亚在为残障人士提供支持和服务的资金方式上发生了重大变化。当然，这种变化的一部分发生在残疾的话语中，“支持”而不是“护理”一词的出现是这种话语转变的一个特征。在本文中，我们使用系统功能语言学 (SFL) 理论的各个方面来分析“支持”一词是如何在十年间撰写的与残疾相关的七个关键政策和计划文件中使用的。我们的目标是了解“支持”一词的含义，以及随着时间的推移，它的含义是如何通过在澳大利亚国家残疾保险计划中的使用而建立、加深和变得更加复杂的。研究结果表明，支持的含义相对灵活，