Identity Rocks!

OK, so I understand how language is needed to express identity and I get Ramage’s three ways of creating identity, but there are definitely more ways of becoming the person that one is and thank goodness that he didn’t explore all of them; he tired the subject enough.

There is obviously the “given;” where you were born, how and to whom, then the “readymade,” which I believe means the identity we feel the need to have in a certain setting, like Ramage’s example of work. There is also “the constructed.” I think Ramage referred to this as the consumer- we show our identity by what we own.


According to this theory, our only real identity is the one we are given- rich or poor, farm kid or city dweller, etc. and we fake the rest. I don’t really agree with this theory because we have true identity from our experiences and though at work or school, we may have a certain identity, it is an identity which we mold into our own-- we are still our true selves and the “readymade” is not all the outsider’s see. I do understand and agree with the “given” and the “constructed” identities.

Also, I’m having a little trouble connecting all of this to rhetoric. I suppose because language is our aim here, that using it and rhetoric is a way to proclaim, or rather talk in circles around, our identity. Oh, and “P-Dog” was pretty funny!

(PS- This is M-Dog.
All you must do is look at her
and she wags her big fat tail!
Her identity= Happy, Ditzy Dog!)