ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of rhetorical roles, sets of verbal strategies resulting in distinctive personal images. It shows how a rhetor's words interact with an audience's perceptions to craft an aura particular to that rhetor within a situation. The chapter investigates the impact of social obligations on discourse, how roles create rhetorical limitations and possibilities, and how rhetors work to take on such roles and craft their personae. Rhetorical personae come from many sources. Often, one's personal rhetorical history produces a distinctive way of articulating one's observations. Rhetors use roles to help audiences assign them proper motives. This was, among other things, Ozzy Osbourne's problem at the Alamo. Had he been some unfortunate derelict who in a state of inebriation had relieved himself, Osbourne might well have escaped San Antonians' wrath. Osbourne had long-since established a functional image and no amount of explaining could make it seem otherwise.
