Aimee Mullins Speech Analysis

Aimee Mullins begins her speech with the primary notion that the rhetoric that society uses to define people with “disadvantages” or “disabilities” causes individuals with the discussed disabilities to be perceived as “weak”, “useless”, “mangled”, and many other negatively descriptive adjectives. Furthermore, her additional premise is that language has a powerful connection with the human thought; ergo, the words that society uses to define certain ailments has a direct affect upon the self-esteem and the persona of those who mistakenly believe or identify with those derogatory words. I personally agree with her that words do have a direct affect upon the human persona and the perspective that one derive of theirself. However, I, also, personally …show more content…
Of course, words do have direct correlation on how we perceive ourselves and others, but that does not mean society must change its entire lexicon to be more accepting of those are unfortunate to have disability. We as a society, and intellectual creatures, must first understand that someone who possess an affliction that causes their life to be more difficult than those without one, are not automatically weaker, or less useful, than “normal” individuals. I intentionally used the word “normal” because Aimee Mullins brought up an interesting topic about normalcy and what that means. We could discuss the philosophy on what it is be considered “normal” or what that means in of itself, but I digress; the point that I want to make is that the erroneous mentality of considering “disabled” individuals to be less normal or even less useful is a normative behavior that once again, violates logic. Therefore, once we change the method of thinking and educate society on the proper usage of words, the understanding of a more educated society will automatically change the meaning of the words we use to be more strict and less