Abstract

In order to examine how disability has been socially constructed historically and rhetorically, Barton conducts a critical-discourse analysis of the first thirty years of Reader's Digest (1922-1952). Interrogating the ways in which disability is represented and referred, Barton discusses how Digest in the 1920's followed eugenics discourse and in the 1940s took a brief stance towards disability rights. Yet overall, Barton finds that Digest puts forth a 'double-discourse' that presents the disabled as a group qualified by lack and necessary of concern,. With these qualifications in mind, the Digest further calls for disabled people to be assimilated within society. The article argues that although the assimilationist rhetoric in Digest is limited in that it does not challenge the status quo of society, further analysis of these discursive changes over time does have the potential to reveal how positive contributions might be made in American culture. (See Lewiecki-Wilson 2001) [Tara Wood, Margaret Price, & Chelsea Johnson, Disability studies, WPA-CompPile Bibliographies, No. 19]