Cullen 1
Abby Cullen
Mr. Houston
Period 2
9/5/2018
Rhetorical Analysis
People with disabilities are shown in the media in a negative way. William J. Peace, the author of “Slippery Slopes: Media, Disability, and Adaptive Sports”, hopes to change the general public’s view in order to make disabilities not a bad thing. Peace’s use of diction, syntax, and testimonies conveys his feelings towards the public’s view of the disability community.
Peace starts his paper by exposing the media’s intentions with their disability stories. He comments in paragraph one how “what is celebrated is not the athletic or personal achievements but rather the ability of a disabled person to ‘overcome’ a physical deficit, the more profound and visible the disability, the better the story.” In this comment by the author, the fact that he put the word overcome in quotes stood out. By doing this, Peace made a point to make sure the reader knew that the media makes it seem like disabilities are oppressive; also, he uses this to affirm that nondisabled people are the ones who are setting the terms of the meaning of debate. In the second paragraph, Peace’s attitude toward the media’s contribution is clear through his use of diction. Disabled people have always experienced oppression but recently “the media has contributed and expanded the gulf between disabled and non-disabled people.” In this quote Peace doesn’t let the reader have any doubt that anybody else is responsible for the continual growth between these two people. His word choice such as “has” is direct and accusing toward the media platforms and turned to be a very effective yet simple way to get his accusation across. Peace’s use of diction clearly displays how he feels towards how the media has portrayed the disabled community.
Most writers vary sentence structure enough to be noticeable throughout a paper. Yet, Peace mostly stays with long sentences. Even though Peace does not use varied sentence structure, he utilizes it to his advantage within his paper. Within paragraph 8, Peace is explaining the testimonies, located in the previous paragraph, in great detail. He wants to make sure the reader is understanding why he is using this testimony within his paper, and in doing that, he ends up with longer sentences. These longer sentences, taking places after the testimonies, also make Peace sound more passionate about the subject....
