This essay examines self-portrayal in fictional and nonfictional written discourse. The essay focuses on various treatments of self-representation in rhetorical and literary critical theory in an effort to overcome the conceptual and terminological confusion that has arisen across time and disciplinary specialties in the discussion of self-portrayal. The essay argues that two common terms for describing self-representation—ethos and persona— are often conflated but that there are good historical and conceptual grounds for maintaining a distinction between them. Such a distinction refines our critical vocabulary for analyzing the multidimensional nature of self-representation in writing.
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Roger D. Cherry (1988) studied this question.
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