Heilker and Yergeau

Summary

In Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau's "Autism and Rhetoric", they discuss the discourse community of those with Autism. They tell us that we should view this discourse community as a rhetoric. When we do this, it will raise awareness for the cause and will help this discourse community. Through real life personal experiences with Autism, these authors give us examples of the everyday life of people with Autism and how they work in their discourse community. The audience of this article is people who are interested in the development and study of Autism. Also, this article is aimed for people who want to fight for Autism and show others that those with Autism are not much different than anyone else. 

Synthesis

I can compare this article with Malinowitz's article because they both talk about groups of people that are usually criticized and looked down upon. Both articles talk about how they are negatively viewed and what needs to be done to change this. 2 other articles that compare with Heilker and Yergeau is Malcom X and Alexie. These articles are similar to Heilker and Yergeau because they all talk about discrimination and fighting for rights. 

Dialectical Notebook

Response	Quotation
This quote is important because it talks about the importance od understanding and using a rhetoric view.	“Through the definitions of rhetoric are legion, what most have in common is their focus on language use in the social realm.” (pg. 262)
I like this quote because it shows us how the author can look at things many different ways.	“When I understand autism as a rhetoric, as a way of being in the world through language, I thus have a very different sense of the silences I often inhabit in the presence of my autistic son.” (pg. 263)
This quote stood out to me because it shows how the author is understanding his son.	“Understanding autism as a rhetoric helps me understand Eli’s longstanding habit of radically shifting the topic of conversation without warning and without transition, without signaling the shift.” (pg. 264)
This quote gives us a good idea of what rhetoric listening gives us and why we should use it.	“Defined generally as a trope for interpretive invention, she says, rhetoric listening signifies a stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or culture.” (pg. 265)
This quote stands out because it tells us the author’s main fear of what could happen to the discourse community of autism.	“But what I perhaps fear most is the construction of the autistics as an inherently arhetorical being.” (pg. 268)
This quote is important because it shows us how important understanding autism is.	“Understanding autism as a rhetoric puts us on familiar footing, however, lets us call upon our considerable through occasionally vexed experiences of dealing with difference, of responding to issues of diversity, language, and identity in our classrooms.” (pg. 269)

Thoughts

I enjoyed reading this article for many reasons. I like discussing the topic of Autism because I can personally relate to it. Throughout high school I taught swim lessons to Autistic children and have experienced first hand how they learn. I can relate to this article because I know how they learn new things and work hard for what they want. I also liked this article because it talked about something interesting instead of things like grammar and structure.