Final exam essay

3 sources : 3 different textbook from readings from the Signs of Life ReadingsTextbook 10th edition

REQUIRED ELEMENTS (not suggestions):
 At least three pages
 Format: All MLA (and only 12-point Times New Roman font). See Purdue University’s Online Writing
Lab for basic MLA guidelines: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/
 At least three quotations from three different SOL readings (one reading may be an intro but at least
two must be from the assigned readings)


here is the first page for the prompt:

TOPIC AND CONTEXT
As our authitors, Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon, note, much of our identity is beyond our control; with race,
gender, and socio-economic status (at least at birth), we get what we get:
We like to think, especially in America where individualism is such a prized mythology, that our
identity is completely within our control, autonomous and self-constructed. But it isn’t that simple,
because a large part of who you are is shaped [P] socially and externally from your many experiences in
life. Your social class…influences your consciousness and sense of self. Your race, too, …influences
how you identify yourself. And your religion, gender, and sexual orientation… affect your experience
and identity. (454)
Still, even though some powerful signs and shapers of our ‘uniqueness’ descend upon us via the gene-pool-
birth-station lottery, we do enjoy some freedom and have many choices in constructing our identities,
especially as we grow and gain experience and awareness. Our clothes, our hairstyles (and, yes, on a personal
note I count baldness as a tonsorial style or choice), our music, our speech, our body art (or lack of it) all signify
to the world who we are, what we value, and how, therefore, we would like others to engage us. You will focus
on markers of identity and how we use them to construct ourselves and imply (or explicitly present) our values,
as well as to understand others and infer their values. Consider, for example, what Aaron Devor says on gender:
As patriarchy has reserved active expressions of power as a masculine attribute, femininity must be
expressed through modes of dress, movement, speech, and action which communicate weakness,
dependency, ineffectualness, …and sensitivity to the needs of others. (476)
Share your thoughts on this this point I’ve been doing my best to make clear, which is that our choices to
display and emphasize certain identity markers or signs (what are some in the above quotation?) in our own
expressions of self and to focus on certain ones in others’ expressions of their selves imply values (I italicized
choices and values because the former cannot happen without the latter).

GETTING STARTED and the OVERALL PROCESS
1) Choose three identity markers that you believe are generally most important to your personhood
BECAUSE THEY IMPLY TWO IMPORTANT VALUES THAT YOU DO YOUR BEST TO LIVE
BY.
2) Then, you semiotically analyze each sign (using that process of SIGN  SYSTEM  SIMILAR
SIGNS IN THAT SYSTEM  DIFFEENCE/S BETWEEN YOUR SIGN AND THE OTHER
SIMILAR ONES  MEANING) for the meaning you want it to have.
3) Then, you take that meaning and use a rhetorical appeal to ethos, pathos, or logos to explain how your
audience infers the value you want them to from that sign’s meaning.
4) (This should seem very similar to what we have been doing all semester long, but now you are doing it
to yourself!)
SOME QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
 What are three or four concrete examples of identity markers, indicators, signs?
 What meanings do we make from those signs?
 Semiotically, how do we account for—by using the process of sign system similarities
difference—those meanings?
 Then rhetorically (once we’ve accounted for, explained those meanings semiotically), how do we
explain—using appeals to pathos, ethos, and logos—the ways those meanings affect us, influence us to
infer certain values?
 Finally, how do we arrange those values into coherent personhoods? How do we surmise that others will
interpret them to understand us and others as certain types of people and then use that understanding to
inform and guide our behaviors?
ORGANIZATIONAL SUGGESTIONS
I suggest an intro, four body paragraphs (two for each sign—one for semiotic analysis and the other for
rhetorical analysis), a synthesis paragraph (where you synthesize your preceding analysis of signs, meanings,
and values into your personality type according to some establish personality paradigm or taxonomy), a
counterargument, and a conclusion.
Your intro should follow this format: hook  narrowing transition  thesis statement. The general topic of
this paper is personhood or personal identity and how the signs we present encourage others to infer our values
and, therefore, to categorize (through analysis and synthesis—even though the uncritical among us, which is to
say sadly most people, will not be aware that they are analyzing and synthesizing) us as certain types of people.
So in your hook, you should mention one or more of those topics. Then, in the narrowing transition part, explain
why whatever you mentioned in the hook matters, why it’s important. This part answers the question “What’s at
stake? Why should we bother to examine the signs of our personhood that we put out there for others to
interpret?” And lastly, as usual, you present your thesis, which I would do like this if I were writing the paper:
My two signs of polo shirts and my informal tone can be the identify markers I choose. .The meanings I want
others to make from those signs are generic and non-threatening from which I hope they will use one or more of
the classical rhetorical appeals to infer that I value (again respectively) honesty and humility.
Then, the body sections or paragraphs will analyze each of the two signs or markers of identity: first
semiotically, where you explain the PROCESS by which interpreters MAKE the meaning you say they do; then
rhetorically, where you explain how that meaning influences interpreters—via appeals to pathos, ethos, or
logos—to infer a certain value. You must have two paragraphs per sign: semiotic analysis for the sign’s
MEANING, followed by rhetorical analysis for the value you want others to infer from that meaning. Here’s
how I would begin my semiotic paragraph for my first sign: The meanings I want others to make from my polo
shirt sign are the related ones of transparency and upfrontness. Then I take my sign through the process of
Sign SYSTEM SIMILAR SIGNS DIFFERENCES  MEANING. Here’s my suggestion for a topic
sentence of the rhetorical paragraph: Then, once anyone who focuses on my polo shirts infers the meanings that
I want them to see transparency and upfrontness; I hope he or she responds to an ethos of authenticity to
understand that I value honesty. To develop this claim/topic sentence, I will explain the connections I make
among meanings, my appeal to an ethos of authenticity, and my value of honesty.
Following these FOUR body paragraphs, you will write a paragraph that synthesizes the meanings of the
two identity signs (which you’ve just analyzed semiotically) and the values they imply (which you’ve just
analyzed rhetorically) into a certain type of person according to some ‘accepted’ measurements/descriptors of
personality (here’s one: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp, this paragraph by explaining how
and why you relate that personality type your three signs of identity and how being that type of person guides
your own choices, thoughts, and behaviors.
THIS ANALYSIS/SYNTHESIS PARAGRAPH MAY BE INTERESTING TO POST ABOUT.
In the counterargument for this paper, you must TURN AGAINST the preceding part of your argument
(where you just presented a personality type that you believe fits with your analysis/synthesis of signs,
meanings, and values) by offering another personality type from whatever assessment tool you use or one from
a different tool. I would start this way: Although I believe _________________ fits me best, others may argue
that my identity markers, their meanings, and their implicit values align more closely with _________________
than the_____________ type. Then you provide at least one sentence of support for this challenging view. After
that support, you begin your TURN BACK, where you respond to that challenge in one of two ways: 1) refute it
completely; those who suggest that alternative view are certainly nice enough and well intentioned people (after
all, they probably don’t torture puppies or steal from donation bins), but here they are just dead wrong; OR 2)
you concede the validity/logic of the TURN-AGAINST view but still contend that the personality type you
argued for in the preceding paragraph is a better fit than that view. Of course, whichever strategy you choose
(and I MUST be able to tell easily which one you’re using) you must support/develop with reasons, evidence,
and maybe even a quotation or two. Conclude this paragraph with why offering a paradigmatic, ‘official’