Service and advocacy organizations have long struggled to find the appropriate language to name traumatic experiences when working with vulnerable populations. Organizations have been pressed to adopt either “victim”-based language or “survivor”-based language, with both terms seen as having mutually exclusive meanings. However, despite academic and popular debates, no recent studies have documented trends in language used to describe traumatic experiences, whether of sexual and relationship violence, or of experiences of war, disaster, or major illness. In this research note, we use administrative data from the Internal Revenue Service to analyze how 3,756 service and advocacy organizations use trauma-related language between 1998 and 2016. Descriptive analysis shows that survivor language has been on the rise as victim language declined. Victim remains a common way to name trauma, however, and survivor tends to join, rather than displace, victim terminology. Further analysis also points to gendered use of both terms. Victim and survivor are used together most often in organizations that work with trauma experienced by women and in the field of sexual and relationship violence. We suggest these findings indicate a more complex story of how communities of language users emerge, which aligns with recent sociological treatments of discourse.

服务和倡导组织长期以来一直在努力寻找合适的语言来描述与弱势群体合作时的创伤经历。组织被迫采用基于“受害者”的语言或基于“幸存者”的语言，这两个术语被视为具有相互排斥的含义。然而，尽管存在学术和大众争论，但最近没有研究记录用于描述创伤经历的语言趋势，无论是性暴力和关系暴力，还是战争、灾难或重大疾病的经历。在本研究报告中，我们使用美国国税局的管理数据来分析 1998 年至 2016 年间 3,756 个服务和倡导组织如何使用与创伤相关的语言。描述性分析表明，随着受害者语言的减少，幸存者语言一直在上升。然而，受害者仍然是命名创伤的常见方式，幸存者倾向于加入而不是取代受害者术语。进一步的分析还指出这两个术语的性别使用。在处理女性经历的创伤的组织以及性暴力和关系暴力领域，受害者和幸存者最常一起使用。我们认为这些发现表明了语言使用者社区如何出现的一个更复杂的故事，这与最近对话语的社会学处理相一致。