The International Classification of Disability, Functioning and Health (ICF) - an example of research methods and language in describing 'social functioning' in medical research

Medical research ventures into the area of social life with a holistic approach to health and disabilities. However, the specific language developed for this kind of research in the 'ICF' model (adopted by the UN) loses sight of the very phenomena it aims at describing. By contrast, based on a social, humanistically-oriented EMCA analysis of a small interactional fragment, the present paper describes in detail the actions that allow ordinary people to categorize the social phenomena they are confronted with. Models like ICF disregard such details by re-specifiying social phenomena in abstract, 'scientific' terms. Additionally, some politicians have promoted the use of such terms also in non-medical professions. Frequent contacts between the practitioners of these professions and laypersons may cause common sense social categories to be reintroduced into the everyday communication of social life, but now in their re-specified versions—a development which calls for debate.