In a recent piece, Arkansas Democrat Gazette grammar columnist Bernadette Kinlaw explored dictionary.com’s newly added and updated entries for 2021. It’s a fun approach to language — especially for fellow word nerds — that explores the origins, newfound usage, and usefulness (or lack thereof) of words and phrases that have become more prominent in recent years.
relating to or noting a person, especially a child or student, who is considered gifted and also has a diagnosed disability, as a learner with both a high IQ and dyslexia.For broad dictionary usage, that’s pretty much spot on. (Incidentally, the site also gave neurodivergent its own entry this year as well.) The idea that awareness of twice-exceptionality has grown enough to merit acknowledgement on sites like dictionary.com — which tend to include more new terms, slang, and informal entries than the Merriam-Websters of the world — is gratifying. After all, that’s what we’re here for. But there’s a twist to this story. In her piece, Kinlaw questions the necessity of some of the newly added words and terms, with twice-exceptional being among them. She writes:
And then I learned about “twice exceptional.” … I’m not sure what to say about this one. It’s jargon. If someone said it, I’d just have to ask for a clarification. Does using the term save time? Will it really become something that’s in widespread usage? Am I just being grumpy?These are interesting questions — including whether the author is being grumpy, but we can unpack that elsewhere. To the layperson, simply describing a child as having a high IQ and dyslexia might be more straightforward. And in a sense, this is correct. After all, twice-exceptional is a broad term, and no two 2e learners have the same profile. Even more so, no two gifted children with dyslexia have the same profile, illuminating the need for specificity and personalization. But once one encounters students with these profiles, similarities appear among them. Many of these learners’ abilities are masked by their learning challenges, and vice versa. They may require both enrichment and remediation. Their social-emotional needs and behavioral challenges may differ from those of their neurotypical peers chiefly because of the great discrepancy that exists between their advanced abilities and challenging disabilities. They, like all students, likely will benefit from a strength-based, talent-focused, personalized curriculum. Thus it becomes helpful to reference an umbrella term when describing the greater population of these learners — and that’s what Dr. James Gallagher did when he (likely) coined the term twice-exceptional, and when Drs. Elizabeth Nielsen and Dennis Higgins subsequently included the term in the title of their federally funded project. [perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The idea that awareness of twice-exceptionality has grown enough to merit acknowledgement on sites like dictionary.com is gratifying. After all, that’s what we’re here for.[/perfectpullquote] “It is unlikely this term will go away anytime soon,” said Dr. Susan Baum, director of the Bridges 2e Center for Research and Professional Development (and a close relative of this piece’s author). “It is part of a global movement that is bent on honoring neurodiversity.” Naming implies acknowledgement and a recognition that a group has distinct needs and characteristics. This often is essential when discussing marginalized populations in society, and it also is critical within gifted and special education. So no, “twice-exceptional” might not be the perfect descriptor for this population, but it functions nicely as an entry point into greater explorations of this dynamic set of learners. And if one is exposed to this “jargon” and doesn’t understand it, those of us with 2e kids, students, colleagues, and family members will be more than happy to provide a primer. Or they can feel free to look it up themselves. After all, dictionary.com now has an entry for it. (As do we.)
