num_pages: 349
description: Disability Rhetoric is the first book to view rhetorical theory and history through the lens of disability studies. Traditionally the body has been seen as at best a rhetorical distraction; at worst those whose bodies do not conform to a narrow range of norms are disqualified from speaking. Yet Dolmage argues that communication has always been obsessed with the meaning of the body and that bodily difference is always highly rhetorical. Following from this rewriting of rhetorical history he outlines the development of a new theory affirming the ideas that all communication is embodied that the body plays a central role in all expression and that greater attention to a range of bodies is therefore essential to a better understanding of rhetorical histories theories and possibilities.
language: None
title: Disability Rhetoric
publisher: Syracuse University Press