Are you a Rhetorical Personality? Test your communication temperament by thinking about your answers to the questions below.
1. I’m usually pretty careful about what I say around others.
2. I am pretty uncomfortable stating my views, especially if its clear most in the room will not agree.
3. I probably worry too much about what others may think.
4. I like the challenge of walking into a room of strangers.
5. If asked to give a presentation to a group, I want to know first what they already think.
6. I think it’s really important to speak your mind.
7. If given the choice of making decisions based on principle versus weighing the facts, I’d stick with the facts.
8. Life is often about knowing the right lines for the situations we are in.
9. If given the choice of political careers, I’d rather be a mayor than the president.
10. I’m probably a better listener than a public speaker.
Answers: Do you have a rhetorical personality? No simple test can provide a full answer. We would need to see you interact with others for that. But it’s likely you are a rhetorical personality if you answered “yes” to most of the questions, except #6.
In the end, Autism and the Williams Syndrome are useful proxies to remind us of how fragile and pliable the generative sources of interaction are, and also how frail our rules can be for deciding what constitutes “normal.” Because we take companionability to be the preeminent benchmark of adaptive success in this world, we find it difficult to resist narratives that end in the triumph of connection.
Chapter 5: Autism, The Williams Syndrome, and The Rhetoric of Sociality
