consumer and client

23:46 Mar 4, 2014 

I can remember back when 'client' came in! It seemed to be in a move to avoid saying 'patient', and of course particularly in things like Social Services, where someone isn't ill, and so isn't a patient — what do you call them? 'Case' depersonalizes them, and I believe from having lived through it that the laudable idea behind 'client' was supposed to be to remind the 'professional' concerned that these people were in the position of 'customers' — who are always right, aren't they? So originally, it was meant to be empowering and help to ensure that the 'service provider' was indeed truly 'serving' their 'clients'.

Funny how the linguistic perspective has now changed!

23:38 Mar 4, 2014 

By the way, I've just been reading the first part of the very interesting and relevant article cited by Vaclav. It includes the following (referring to the 1970s):

"In the UK, however, the term ‘client’ came to be challenged both from within and outside the profession. From within, there was a concern that the notion of a ‘client’ represented an objectification of the social work relationship whereby it was assumed power laid with the professional to identify what the passive client needed. [...]
Within this relationship, the ‘client’ is constructed as someone in need of help, because they lack either the necessary abilities or the capacity to help themselves and thus need the specialist knowledge and skills of the social worker. [...]"

Lawyers and other expert professionals (like translators!) have clients. It connotes respect, but also, perhaps, a certain passivity (not always the case with our clients, I grant you): putting yourself in the expert's hands.

23:30 Mar 4, 2014 

Could I just make it clear that I do not subscribe at all to the Thatcherite premises implicit in the word "consumer" as applied to recipients of social services. I was merely reporting it. To me it seems a very unsuitable term. But the source text, which refers to disabled people realising they would have to think of themselves as consumers of services, not clients, apparently as part of a civil rights movement, seems to be using the words in the way I have suggested, since it seems that these people aspire to having more say, being less passive and indeed receiving more respect.

This page reports a recent British debate among social workers and those they serve as to whether the term "client" or "service user" is more suitable. What is interesting for us is that a number of the social workers comment that "client" is the long-standing standard term but that it has negative connotations. One says that "it has the overtone of receiving services rather than an equal relationship". Several object vehemently to "consumer" or "customer" as carrying a phony implication of free choice.
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/mental-health/2012/07/s...

19:20 Mar 3, 2014