Compose a miniature playlist of 3-5 songs that serves to in some way tell the story of your life. A personal narrative asks you to reflect on your experiences using the kind of critical rhetorical distance we’ve encountered in some of our course readings. But how else might writing about your life and these songs demonstrate your understanding of rhetorical principles? After all, a song—like an essay, a video, a speech, or anything else that relies on verbal or nonverbal communication—is a rhetorical situation. Each song relies on elements of the rhetorical triangle (author, audience, message) and has a purpose, and the choices made within the song—not only the lyrics, but the sound of the music and its arrangement—likely reveal the use of other rhetorical concepts explained in our textbook. Remember those Greek terms logos, pathos, ethos, humos, and kairos (Links to an external site.)? Are those concepts relevant to the songs? Are they relevant to the moment(s) in your life that you have chosen to write about?
