Heilker and Yergeau

Heilker and Yergeau

ROW pg. 261

Summary

For this article, "Autism and Rhetoric", by Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau, they explain the mind of an autistic person and how they have a language too.  They use personal narratives to help explain more about the topic.  The article wants the reader to focus on rhetorical reading so they people can understand the lives of other people in different discourse communities.

Sythesis

For me, this article connects to only a few other readings.  First I connected it to Devitt because of how both talk about people from discourse communities talk to people outside their discourses.   I also related this article to Malinowitz, because her discussion of Gay and Lesbian discourse is similar to the way the Autistic discourse is.  People need to have more understanding about it and give it more of a chance.  Lastly, I connected this article to Glenn because of the talk about advertisement. 

Thoughts

This article was very interesting.  I am glad that they used personal narratives in this article.  I feel that it makes the article a little easier to read when you are reading something a little more personal to someone.  I would actually love to read more about this discourse communities. 

“We are being swamped by a massive increase in fundamentally uncertain yet persuasive discourse” 261

Autism is a very uncertain disciuse and not many people understand what it is all about.

I like that this starts off the article, it kind of sets up what this article is going to be a bout.	"Public awareness and public discourse about autism are approaching critical mass.'' 261
We should treat autism like any other discourse.	"If autism is a rhetoric, then we are beholden to respond to it with cultural sensitivity, ethical care, and pedagogical complexity."262
We already have the tools to treat this discourse as any other discourse.	"And if autism is a rhetoric and autistics are minority rhetors, English faculty already posses all the tools and experience they will need to do exactly that."262
Rhetoric listening it very important so people can understand people in other discourse communities.	“Similarly, rhetorical listening allows us to generate a more productive discourse about autism and the rhetorical triangle.” Pg 265
We can now make autistic people more a part of society rather than back when we used to exclude people from society because they were autistic.	“Conceiving of autism as rhetoric, as a way of being in the world through language, allows us to reconstruct what we have historically seen as language deficits as, instead, language differences.”269