The Role of Rhetoric in Self-Identification

In John D. Ramage's Rhetoric: A User's Guide, he discusses the subject of identity and how one comes to create and understand his identity. In the beginning of the section titled, "Essence v. Substance," he defines essence as "some part of us--perhaps physical, perhaps spiritual--that make us who were are, that if removed from our identity would change our identity." Later on, he explains that we come to an understanding of things when we compare one thing to another. Rhetorically, this can be understood to mean that an apple gains its meaning by using other words such as "fruit," "red," "juicy," or "round." The same goes for "finding one's self." In order to discover one's essence, we can only look to the words that have been laid out for our choosing. Essentially, then, this search for identity is merely a search for the perfect word to satisfy our need to classify and categorize (or uncategorize) ourselves and to differentiate between what we are and what we are not.

So here's my question: How unique are we when we must resort to prefabricated words to identify ourselves? When a person spends his youth (or even his lifetime) trying to discover himself, has he always innately known who that person is but simply didn't have the words for it and therefore remained unaware? If so, do these decades of unrest and confusion circulate around the need for language to give us self-satisfaction?

If our identity depends on the right combination of words that others before us have created, then perhaps the people who have their own truly unique identities are those who cannot express at all what it is that makes them unique. If this is so, then perhaps we should all simply stop trying to find ourselves or rather begin to revere those who are mute or live in distant monasteries devoted to lifetime vows of silence. We should never attempt to discuss who these people really are because it is not possible to give them a unique identity because simply describing them breaks up the originality with our prefabricated words. And the rest of us must accept the fact that we are all the same and different, unique and unoriginal until someone creates a new word out of no other previously known words to describe us.

Or perhaps there is an infinite number of ways to combine the words we have been given and for eternity the English language will create new and unique ways to help us find ourselves?? :)