My Rhetorical Analysis

The Assignment You will analyze your own rhetorical self, examining how you present yourself in various contexts and what forces have shaped those presentations. Drawing on course readings by Goffman, Foucault, Nguyen, and others, you will develop a theoretical argument about how your identity has been constructed through rhetorical practices, and you will articulate a vision for your future rhetorical self. This is not simply a personal narrative or reflection. Instead, you will use theory as a lens to analyze your own experiences, making an argument about how external forces, social performances, and rhetorical choices have shaped who you areand who you might become. Key Questions to Address Your paper should wrestle with these central questions: 1. Who is my rhetorical self now? o How do you present yourself in different contexts (academic, professional, online)? o What performances (in Goffman’s sense) do you regularly give? o What rhetorical strategies do you use to establish your ethos, connect with audiences, or persuade others? 2. What forces have shaped this rhetorical self? o What social expectations, cultural values, or institutional pressures influence how you present yourself? o How have games (Nguyen), technologies of the self (Foucault), social fronts (Goffman), or expectations for optimal performance (Tolentino) shaped your identity? o What have you idealized? What have you concealed? 3. Who do I want to be, and how can I present that self to the world? o Given your analysis, what do you want to change (or keep) about how you present yourself? o How might you resist, revise, or reimagine your rhetorical performances? o What theoretical insights from our readings will guide your future rhetorical choices?

Required Elements Your paper must: Make a clear, arguable claim about your rhetorical self and the forces that have shaped it Engage substantively with at least 3 readings (from among Nguyen, Goffman, Foucault, Odell, and Tolentino) and use theory as a lens to analyze your own experiences, Analyze specific, concrete examples from your own life (performances, interactions, moments of self-presentation) Use theoretical concepts accurately (define and apply terms like performance, front, idealization, technologies of the self, optimization, etc.) Move beyond description to analysis: Don’t just tell us what you doexplain why it matters and what it reveals Look forward: Articulate a vision for your future rhetorical self based on your analysis What This Paper Is NOT: A personal narrative without analysis: Don’t just tell your story. Use theory to interpret it. A summary of course readings: We’ve all read them; show us how YOU apply them. A confession or therapy session: Be reflective but analytical; maintain critical distance. A generic thesis statement: Avoid claims like “social media has shaped my identity”be specific about HOW and WHY. Purely descriptive: Move beyond I do X in context Y to I do X in context Y, which reveals Z about power/performance/rhetoric. Readings you might draw on: Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: performance, front, setting, appearance, manner, idealization, working consensus, sincere vs. cynical Foucault, “Technologies of the Self”: practices of self-transformation, power, surveillance, subjectivity Nguyen, The Score: value capture, games, autonomy, agency Odell, “The Case for Nothing”: attention economy, resistance, refusal Tolentino, “Always Be Optimizing”: self-optimization, performance of self-improvement Rhetorical concepts: ethos, pathos, logos, audience awareness, rhetorical situation A Final Note: This assignment asks you to turn the analytical tools we’ve been using on texts back onto yourself. This can feel uncomfortable, even vulnerable. That’s normal. Remember: You’re not being graded on your life choices or your identityyoure being graded on the quality of your analysis. You control what you share; choose examples you’re comfortable analyzing in an academic context. The goal isn’t to confess or expose yourself, but to think critically about rhetoric and identity. Strong papers balance personal insight with analytical distance. The most successful papers are those that take intellectual risksthat use theory to see familiar experiences in new ways, that question assumptions about identity and authenticity, that grapple honestly with uncomfortable contradictions. We’re all performing our rhetorical selves, all the time. This paper is your chance to become more aware of how, why, and for whomand to imagine who else you might become. AI-Powered Tools As our course policies make clearand as we have discussed in classusing generative technology to write your papers for you is a violation of Lehighs policies on academic integrity and, thus, is not allowed. You may, however, use such technologies for brainstorming ideas and proofreading (but not editing). If you use ChatGPT or similar tools in any way, you must include the following at the end of your assignment: 1) a brief statement explaining which AI program you used and why and how you used it; 2) a list of the prompts you used to generate responses from the AI program; 3) and a brief explanation of how you think the AI program improved your work.