In the essay "Disability" by Nancy Mairs, the author argues that the media must treat people with disability as normal. Mairs support her claim by first appealing to the reader’s emotions, secondly by proving her credibility as a disabled person, and thirdly appealing to the reader's logic by showing illogical reasoning of people in the media. Mairs’s purpose is to prove that disabled people are normal people as well in order to persuade advertiser to represent the disabled in the media. Based on Mair’s informal tone and diction, she is writing to the consumers but specifically to advertisers with the power to change the representation of the disabled community.
Nancy Mairs introduces her essay “Disability” by appealing …show more content…
Mairs points out the logical fallacies in an local advertisers reason of not including disabled people people in his ads: “We don’t want to give the people the idea that our product is just for the handicapped.” Advertisers use this as an excuse to not include people with disabilities on ads. Therefore, Mairs goes off into a diatribe on all the reasons why that logic is faulty. Mairs went on to say, “If you saw me pouring out puppy biscuits, would you think these kibbles were only for the puppies for the crippled?” and through numerous rhetorical questions, she expose further why the opposition is wrong. Mairs adopts an urgent tone as she explores why the media should represent the disabled community because not only it will affect the disabled, it will affect the “able-bodied.” She points out how one can become disabled “involuntarily, without warning, at any time.” People, therefore, will have an easier time, mentally and physically, if “we insert disability daily into our field of vision: quietly, naturally, in the small and common sense of our ordinary