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.

About the Author
Jay Timothy Dolmage is associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.

Reviews
Disability Rhetoric is well-crafted, intricately assembled, and carefully presented. Through it Dolmage establishes a long heritage of rhetorical crafters, people whose extraordinary bodies enabled the cultivation of rhetorical skill.""-Rhetoric Review

""Dolmage deepens rhetorical studies' understanding of the ways bodies are inevitably tied up with meaning-making and how disability may extend the ways we understand embodiment, embodied rhetoric, and rhetoric itself.""-Rhetoric Society Quarterly

""In lively, fresh prose and with such an accessible style, Dolmage is using disability studies and its approach to bodies/ embodiment to re/place the body in the very old field of rhetoric. Yet he is also using rhetoric, in both theory and practice, to fruitfully expand and explore all the available means of persuasion that are also possible for disability.""-Brenda Brueggemann, author of Deaf Subjects



Book Information
ISBN 9780815634454
Author Jay Timothy Dolmage
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Syracuse University Press
Publisher Syracuse University Press
Weight(grams) 514g