Rhetorical Analysis Of Nancy Mairs Cripple

230 Words1 Pages
In the passage, Nancy Mairs, who has multiple sclerosis, calls herself “a cripple.” Mairs presents herself in the passage by using rhetorical features such as tone, word choice, and rhetorical structure. Among other vocabulary possibilities, she specifically choose cripple to be the word that describes her. Why she choose this word, she wasn’t really sure. Perhaps because the word cripple doesn't hide the truth from the outside: “ I have long since grown accustomed to them; and if they are vague, at least they hint at the truth.” Perhaps she uses the word “cripple” to show that her conditions is more severe for it to be described as “handicapped” or “disabled.” The rhetorical feature she used was tone; it showed that she has already accepted