An **"I" anecdote** is a [[rhetorical move]] in which the speaker tells a relevant story involving themselves, using the first-person "I" pronoun. The story might set the [[theme]], subtly and strategically [[framing|frame]] the upcoming discussion, and establish a certain kind of *ethos* for the speaker. This move does several things at once. [[rhetorical structure|Structurally]], it blends together the [[exordium]] and [[narratio]]. This means it creates an interesting opening hook (i.e., the *exordium*), and it tells a kind of "back story" that sets the stage or background for the current discussion (i.e., the *narratio*). While doing both those things, it also establishes a certain kind of [[ethos]] (and _ethos_ generally concerns the speaker, that is, the "I" who speaks). <br><br> **Examples of articles that begin with an "I" anecdote:** <hr> ### Wayne C. Booth [[Wayne C. Booth]] begins an article, "[[Booth 1963 - The Rhetorical Stance|The Rhetorical Stance]]" with a move like this: > LAST FALL I had an advanced graduate student, bright, energetic, well-informed, whose papers were almost unreadable. He managed to be pretentious, dull, and disorganized in his paper on Emma, and pretentious, dull, and disorganized on Madame Bovary. On The Golden Bowl he was all these and obscure as well. Then one day, toward the end of term, he cornered me after class... This one's notable because it's in a peer-reviewed academic paper, which, as a genre, is normally less flexible for less formal rhetorical moves like this. With students — who've sometimes been told they should never say "I" in a paper[^terrible_advice] — there's value to be had in unpacking what affords or allows a move like this, in this context and genre. [^terrible_advice]: Terrible advice. 🙂 <hr> ### Jia Tolentino Sometimes, this move also serves to provide the backstory, or [[narratio]], and helps [[a speaker tunes themselves to their audience|tune]] the speaker to their audience. [[Tolentino 2017 - Repressive Authoritarian Soul of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends|An article]] by [[Jia Tolentino]] about Thomas the Tank Engine actually has some fun with this. This is the opening of the article. Notice how Tolentino uses an "I" anecdote *in order to* set up the agreed upon background (the "statement of facts," as it were) before dropping in that big whammy of a [[propositio]]: > When I was a child, I could spend all day at Shining Time Station, the fictive train depot with its own eponymous TV show, where Thomas the Tank Engine and all his plate-faced locomotive friends worked and lived. To my undeveloped brain, each episode seemed like a beautiful daydream, in which an orderly, magical, trance-inducing universe ticked on under bluebird skies. For company, there was the Conductor, voiced first by Ringo Starr and later by George Carlin, and then the trains: gentle blue Edward, moody green Henry, big strong Gordon, little red James, and, of course, Thomas, with his pointed eyebrows and perpetual smile. The show, which included segments that had first aired on a British show called “Thomas & Friends,” began airing on PBS in 1989, and each episode opened with a Joe Cocker-ish theme song: “Reach for the steam, reach for the whistle, go where the railway runs/ Reach for the words, reach for the story, follow the rainbow sun.” I would hum along. How could I possibly have imagined that, decades later, I would get lost in obscure corners of the Internet where people interpret the show—at length—as a depiction of a premodern corporate-totalitarian dystopia? ([[Tolentino 2017 - Repressive Authoritarian Soul of Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends|Tolentino 2017]]) Tolentino is doing is setting up the agreed-upon backstory: Oh yeah, Shining Time Station, we all remember that, don't we? With Thomas the Tank Engine, and that happy, la-la-la children's TV show? Right, we're talking about the same thing? Well, it turns out, it's... \*checks notes\* a representation of a "premodern corporate totalitarian dystopia." What comes next is a nice example of the fact that [[if you have a very bold claim, you should address the refutatio early on]].