Reading Response No. 18

Summary:
In their article "Autism and Rhetoric," Paul Heilker and Melanie Yergeau attempt to educate their audience about the concept of autism being a discourse community. They argue this by pointing out that people who suffer from autism have a focus on communication in social situations, much like any discourse community. They catergorize it as a rhetoric becasue both things have shared characteristics.

Synthesis:
This article can be related to the articles we read that deal with the definition of discourse community. The authors use such language to label autisim as a discourse community as the other authors do when they define other discourse communities.

Personal Response:
I thought this article was interesting because I never considered that autisim could be a discourse community. The authors did a good job of pointing this out and giving a good argument on the subject.