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The importance of euphemism
Importance of euphemism
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The importance of euphemism
Importance of euphemism
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In this essay Nancy Mairs presents herself as someone who is crippled. Out of many others possibilities of names to be called Mairs states that she prefers being called "crippled" because it is more straightforward and precise. In addition she states that she would like to be seen as a tough person whom fate/gods have not been kind to. The word "crippled" also evokes emotion from people which is also what she would like. Furthermore Nancy Mairs does not like other words such as "disabled" or "handicapped" to be used as a description her.
In the passage Nancy Maria prefers to call herself “cripple”. She finds “disabled” and “handicapped” to be inaccurate of her condition. Nancy Mairs uses tone, word choice, and rhetorical structure to convey feelings on the term “cripple”. Nancy Mairs tone throughout the passage was neutral. Statements like “I am cripple.
Being in the Congo forces Adah to look at her disability in a different way—almost like reading a book backward. "Nobody cares that she 's bad on one whole side," she says, "because they 've all got their own handicap" (1.7.11). People in Kilanga are missing arms, legs, and eyes, and they go on about their daily business like it 's no big thing. We have a feeling she has the same view of her body as many people in Kilanga do: it 's just a tool, a vessel to carry her through this life.
Every mark conveys a meaning usually changing depending upon the text . In cutting edge times, being called a cripple In any case, in the paper titled, "On Being a Disabled person" by Nancy Mairs, the maker legitimizes calling herself a debilitated individual, clearly insinuating a low self-respect at first look. Mairs contradicts that idea, also plotting her puzzling individual, social, and societal buildings in life. At the end of her article, she tells the group that she is an apt, driven, and shrewd woman who can manage both her degenerative contamination and the hardships of life, far from the slight, adolescent person who abhors herself.
n Nancy Mairs essay, “Disability”, she illustrates the lack of representation of people with disabilities in the media. While disability plays a major role in Mairs’ life, she points out the various ways her everyday life is ordinary and even mundane. Despite the normalcy of the lives of citizens with disabilities Mairs argues the media’s effacement of this population, is fear driven. She claims, “To depict disabled people in the ordinary activities of daily life is to admit that there is something ordinary about the disability itself, that it may enter anybody’s life” (Mairs 14). Able bodied people worry about the prospect of eventually becoming physically impaired.
People with disabilities are often viewed as less capable, less intelligent and not available to cope well in society. Mairs uses the different persuasive strategies such as ethos, logos and pathos to create a conscious awareness to build a world in which despite the differences everyone is treated with equality and dignity. She imagines her body as something other than problematic, but a reason to fight to build a world in which people wants her in. Mairs mentions in page 169 “I imagine a world where people, allowed the space to accept- admit, endure, embrace- their diverse and often difficult realities.” As Robert M Hensel, a famous Guinness world champion and a man with spina bifida said once “There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as
Mairs believes that the word crippled is truthful even though it offends people. She says that other words are not relevant and calls them “pure verbal garbage.” She understands that society sees the words “differently abled” as a positive label, but contradicts their beliefs by calling herself a cripple in order to bring out her tough side. She does not tolerate the uselessness of the other words because they do not represent her situation better than “crippled.”
“Only 50 years ago persons with intellectual disabilities were scorned, isolated and neglected. Today, they are able to attend school, become employed and assimilate into their local community” (Nelson Mandela). Prior to the later part of the 20th century people with intellectual disabilities were often ridiculed, treated unfairly, feared, and locked away in institutions. According to Rhonda Nauhaus and Cindy Smith in their article Disability Rights through the Mid-20th Century, The laws of any nation reflect its societal values. The real life issue of discrimination towards people with intellectual disabilities in the United States and Australia is demonstrated in the novel, Of Mice and Men by showing how this issue affects one of the main characters, Lennie Smalls.
“The fact is most of us move in and out of disability in our lifetime, whether we do so through illness, an injury or merely the process of aging,” stated Thomson in the article Becoming Disabled which had its first sentence indicating a crazy fact about how Roughly one in five Americans lives with a disability. Which I thought was insane because a majority of the time when someone thinks of a disability you just think of physical, you don’t necessarily think of someone who is aging. It was cool to realize that the tables turn consistently, so don’t just look at someone with a disability differently, because at one point it might just happen to be you. I just loved how he said, “Becoming disabled demands learning how to live effectively as a person with disabilities, not just living as a disabled person trying to become nondisabled.”
People may tend to think they are compassionate and nonjudgmental when it comes to people's disabilities. However, everyone is judgmental in some way shape or form. Even people who don’t think are. Whether it’s a dirty look, mean comment, or fear of those with disabilities. What a majority of these able bodied people aren't aware of is their own personal invisible disabilities.
When I reading Mair’s piece of her disability, it was very interesting to note how much meaning the word “cripple” meant to her day to day life. Whenever people look at someone with any type of illness or disability, they instinctively react with the shocked expression. They may not be in exaggerating manner, but they see this human with this aliment and they think of how this could potentially be them or their loved ones. You find it that people don’t feel comfortable when seeing someone who is crippled or obese. You tend to want to see people who are in a healthy condition and not someone who might be in a dying state.
When people hear handicap they think not able to care for themselves. Nancy wants to be known as a tough individual able to take care of herself. The reader can feel the agony of what Nancy is feeling. The tone of this passage is determination and agony. Nancy feels that cripple is more stronger word than “handicap” or ‘disabled.”
In the essay, “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs uses humorous diction and a positive tone to educate people about life as a cripple and struggles of people with disabilities. She does this to show how hard it is to be disabled and how it differs from the life of someone without a disability. She talks about the struggles and the fears that disabled people must deal with on a daily basis. Mairs use of rhetoric creates a strong sense of connection and understanding for the reader. Nancy Mairs is successful in using detailed imagery, diction, and tone to educate her readers about the difficulties of living with a disability.
Words are very powerful. They have enormous power to convey with a purpose of insult which may have a devastating impact. The most astonishing characteristics about words is they can mean completely different from one person to another person. In Nancy Mairs, "On Being a Cripple" she uses the words cripple to describe herself. Nancy is a powerful women who insist that this word is her choice and a way of accepting the fact of her disables.
Disabled people are people who have mental or physical limitation so they depend on someone to support them in doing their daily life needs and jobs. Although disabled people are a minority and they are normally ignored, they are still a part of the society. The statistics show that the proportion of disabled people in the world rose from 10 percent in the seventies of the last century to 15 percent so far. The number of handicapped exceeds a billion people all over the world, occupied about 15 percent of the world's population, as a result of an aging population and the increase in chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, blood and psychological diseases that are related with disabilities and impairments. Every five seconds someone