From empathy to activism
An analysis of a letter to the Minister which resulted in successful outcomes for a person with severe intellectual
disability and their family
This paper examines how an adult’s letter to the New South Wales Minister for Disability regarding problems
identified within the disability service sector resulted in successful outcomes: that is, the changes asked for were delivered. A
range of discourse semantic tools of analysis including
appraisal (
Martin and White
2005) and
connexion (
Martin 1992;
Rose
and Martin 2012) were employed in analysing this letter, which can be seen as an example of empathy activism. The
analysis identifies how the complex layering of stages and phases that organise the arguments in this letter powerfully drives the
point home, which is to convince the Minister to increase the staff ratio at a government-run respite house for children with
intellectual disabilities.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Background: Parenting, intellectual disability and challenging behaviour
- 1.2The role of language in compassion – empathy activism
- 1.2.1Appraisal
- 1.2.2Reasoning: Connexion
- 2.Analysis of the letters
- 2.1Letter phase: Salutation (greeting) (following Martin 1985)
- 2.2Stage 1: Thesis (following Rose 2021)
- 2.3Stage 2: Arguments
- 2.4Stage 3: Reiteration
- 2.5Letter phase: Valediction (following Martin 1985)
- 2.6Letter phase: Authority (why I matter)
- 3.Concluding discussion
-
References
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