Author: Katharine Annear, Lecturer (Teaching Specialist) Disability and Community Inclusion, Flinders University

Language trends change quickly at the hands of social media users. They explode into our screens, rather than slowly evolve. This can change the ways we talk about diagnoses such as autism and concepts like neurodiversity. But before we use a term, we should look at how it came to be and what it means to people. So where does the new word “neurospicy” come from? And why do some people embrace it, while others reject it? First, let’s unpack ‘neurodiversity’ The term neurodiversity evolved collectively in the mid-1990s in an online space dedicated to autistic people. The term refers…