Summary: In the article "Autism and Rhetoric", Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau attempt to explain how Autism is considered a rhetoric and they try to further explain how the public should approach how to handle people that have it. They explain that rhetoric is how we see it as a role of communication in social interaction. In the end, they explain that autism is a way of being in this world through language.
Synthesis: "Queer Texts, Queer Contexts" by Malinowitz is extremely similar to this article because both of these texts contain individuals who are part of a discourse community that are current in today's time. This article focuses mainly on Autism where as Malinowitz focuses on the LGBT community and how each are to be considered discourses.
Opinion: This was a good article because autism is something we encounter in society today and not much is really known about how to handle people that have it. Taking in the knowledge that they gave to through this article helped me somewhat understand that with time and understanding, one can begin to understand that person. I've noticed with one of my former school mates younger sibling that as I had grown to know him and spend time with him, I could understand the things he wanted and how to communicate with him. It was really awesome as I could still understand him even though there was some difficulty. This was the one article I could compare to something I did in the past and it brought it back to my memory again and I thought that was awesome.
Good response, Rae'ven. I'm glad you brought a personal connection to the reading. Also, I hope our discussion in class today illuminated how we might use the terms "discourse" and "community" when talking about the groups discussed by Malinowitz and Heilker & Yergeau, but why we should hesitate to classify them as "discourse communities," as you did in your synthesis here.
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