The Rhetoric of Self-Presentation

This is what “I” had to do…
This project asks you:
– to draw on your own rhetorical experience
– to describe and critically analyze the rhetorical effects of a genre of self-presentation
o such as your social media profile or account (Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook), a personal website or blog, a YouTube video or Tik Tok, a musical collection or playlist, a scrapbook, a photo album, a mixed tape or playlist—or some other genre of self-presentation. Past students have analyzed their college entrance essays, penpal letters, diary entries across a range of time, Instagram accounts, Medium essays, and Twitter threads.
Length: 750-1000 words
Purpose:
– to describe a genre of self-presentation
– analyze its strengths and weaknesses in terms of its appropriateness to the rhetorical situation (communicator, audience, message) and the use of the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos).
– to describe and give examples from the contents of your profile, website, blog, etc.
– to critically examine how the rhetorical strategies and choices you employ help to craft an effective identity or online identity.
You will analyze the effect of rhetorical choices (such as your bio or “about” information, your choice of photos, your posting and sharing activities, your commenting activities and themes, your use of language) that you have made to present yourself, including
– how you build ethos/character, credibility, and identification with an audience;
– how you shape a message (through appeals to logic)
– how you persuade audiences, both addressed and invoked, and appeal to their emotions and values
– how the context, exigence, purpose, and means of communication (modality, medium, genre, and circulation) shape your self-presentation.
You will then answer the questions:
– How do my choices and actions help to further my own sense of how I want to define myself?
– How does my self-presentation help me to position myself socially?
Audience:
In addition to myself (as your English 101 teacher) as audience, you should consider your peers and classmates as a secondary audience. They will have a shared context for reading about and discussing rhetoric but will be interested in learning about specific, concrete experiences, events, and people that have shaped your own communicative practices.
Criteria for Evaluation:
– a clear focus on how your presentation of yourself in social media or other genres is shaped by the rhetorical situation (you as communicator, your audience, your message) and your purpose, exigence, context, and means of communication;
– concrete illustrations of how you employ strategies of ethos, logos, and pathos and clear examples from your genre of self-presentation (social media profiles, blogs, journals, etc.);
– critical analysis of what you see as the effects of your rhetorical choices and actions within social media or social groups—how it shapes an identity or positions you socially;
– an effective organization and structuring of points;
– appropriate conventions of style and mechanics.

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