Textual Practices Representing Disability

Ellen Barton writes of changing times for the disabled. Their lives are always discussed in terms of improvement, because of the ways that people with disabilities have been integrated into different parts of society, like schools. (Barton 169) Historically, there are ideas and opinions about disabled people that have been rooted in American minds culturally speaking.  Charity organizations became a prominent discourse of disability. The way that charity organizations represented disability in America created a context for the audience of this rhetorical situation. Charity became something people weren't necessarily involved in but rather helped in the way of a business transaction.


The United Way was founded in the early 1950s and created a discourse of the stereotypes these disabled Americans faced in their society. The biggest focus of the United Way and the charitable organizations of the time seemed to one of making the experience of society less complex in regards to people with disabilities. Like in any era of time, terminology played a huge role in the discourse of disability. Specific words had negative connotations, like "cripple", "retard", "spastic", and "handicapped". (Barton 170) There was also this stereotype created that living with a disability was/is a social experience. Carol Gill brings up an ideal world that would view the disability culture as human diversity. Disability has this sense of segregation and prejudice that is a lot more prominent than any feeling of integration or welcome that should be given to those with disabilities.

Charities most always use front-stage representations, or representations for the public to see and discuss. Back-stage representations generate and support the front stage representations. This idea reminds me of a behind-the-scenes type of representation and discussion that has negative connotation. The work of those raising money for the charities was celebrated whereas the actual presence of the disabled people made people feel like it couldn't be discussed. There was no lack of goodness in American society but there was also a sense of fear for what could come. There was a sense of what was "American", as reinforced by the quote from sociologist Fred Davis when he said of polio that, "In short, it was un-American." (Barton 172) Children, in addition to pity and fear regarding these children, were used as a sign of these disabled people but also brought a more rhetorical side to the way they were presented.


Barton, Ellen L. “Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way.” Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Ed. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. 169-199.

Davis, Fred. Passage Through Crisis: Polio Victims and Their Families, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.

Gill, Carol. "Questioning Continuum." Shaw 42-49.