Primary and Secondary False Identities?

Yesterday in English 225.021, I gave my presentation on the importance of educating teachers about emotion management techniques to explain how teachers can become emotionally invested in their classrooms but not to a point where they become overwhelmed.  I planned out nearly every single detail of this presentation, followed the guidelines in the textbook, and even looked at online resources to find out what experts say is the best way to make a powerpoint presentation.  I tried to appeal to pathos, ethos, logos.  I tried to make the slides have the barebone facts and fill in the gaps through my speech, trying to make the audience more engaged.  Since I was pretending like I was presenting to school administrators, I tried to appeal to ethos by wearing a suit.  I used clips, pictures, statistics, and expert opinion.  I even spent a significant amount of time working on a catchy title for the presentation/program I presented (CARE: Coaching Appropriate Reactive Emotions), something I rarely worry about in my writing.  Therefore, from a technical standpoint, I feel like I didn't everything I should have.  However, despite my classmates trying to convince me that I did a good job, I am wary.  When I spoke, I got tongue-tied in quite a few places and forgot to add in details that would have appealed to the audience.  And, despite forgetting to add in details, I fell behind and had to rush at the end of the presentation to meet the time allotment (a problem I didn't experience while practicing).

Why is it that when I practice alone or in front of friends and family I can think clearly, but when I speak in front of a group of people I get tongue tied and blank out?  Perhaps one contributing factor can be found by using, and adapting Hochschild's idea of identity.  According to Arlie Hochschild, we have a true identity and many false identities.  The true identity has its own feelings and thoughts which can be exposed only when completely uninhibited, a situation which may never FULLY happen.  Although we often say that we have emotions deep within us that represent what we are "really" feeling, even then those emotions may not be coming from our true identity but from the demands of society and the situation.  Hochschild says that we have many false identities we present, depending on the demands of the situation.  You may be an extrovert, a confident student, a optimistic brother, a family man, a pessimistic hater, a passionate lover, or adopt any other identity depending on what is appropriate to that situation; however, these presented identites are not who you really are.  Hochschild says that these identities are necessary for us to get on in life, and to protect our true identity from being injured.  However, despite the attempts to protect the true self, the true self may become inaccessible or lost as we present so many false identities that we don't really know who we are.

I have been studying Hochshild's identity theory and emotions in teacher education all semester, so I felt well versed on the topic of emotion training (or the lack thereof) in teacher education.  However, I rarely applied this identity theory to myself.  Maybe I have found a link by evaluating my speaking abilities...you tell me:

When we speak in front of anyone, even without Hochschild's identity theory, I think most people would agree that we are "not ourselves."  For me, I spoke in front of two different audiences: my family/friends and my classmates/teacher.  When I spoke in front of both groups, the main surface identity, or what I will refer to hereforth as my primary false identity, I was trying to portray was one in the same (that of a representative for a teacher education program).  However, there was another false identity, a secondary false identity, inherent in the presentation: who I, James, actually am to those people.  To my friends and family, I am a companion, a friend, someone who they (generally) associate with by choice.  In the family situation, I feel that the false self I portray more closely resembles my true self.  I feel uninhibited and comfortable with who I am at home.  In such a situation, I don't have to be an intelligent academic because I know that these people will not judge me.  However, to my teacher and classmates, I am an academic and the class is obligated to deal with me.  Unlike the James identity I present to my family, the identity of "academic" is not one I am comfortable with.  Of course I do well in school, but I am just a student, not an expert.  Thus in the classroom case, my secondary false identity of academic is one I am less comfortable with and is more disconnected from what I believe to be my true identity.

When giving the CARE presentation, I was successful at home but stumbled in class.  But, from a surface level, it seems that I was presenting the same identity in both situations, the false professional identity of CARE representative.  However, this false identity of CARE representative/speaker must coexist with the other secondary false identity I must present.  In front of my family, my secondary false identity was one I was comfortable with.  In class, I was not comfortable with the secondary false identity of academic.  Therefore, I believe that perhaps one reason why I was successful at home but not at school was because of the comfort level with the identity I present.  Depending on how comfortable I am with that second identity, and whether it lies congruent with or antiparallel to the first false identity determines the effectiveness of the execution of the primary false identity.

My take on false identities may not be true, but I think it is intriguing to some extent.  From the explanations of Hochschild's identity theory that I have read, there always seems to just be one false identity present in a given situation.  However, I don't believe that this is true.  Maybe the theory was presented this way because in saying false identities the authors assume that the reader understands that the false identity is always multidimensional.  Maybe Hochschild actually did say there are many identities competing in every situation, and it just got lost in translation.  After all, I have not taking Hochschild's theory directly from her book, but rather from the interpretations of other.

However, no matter what the truth of the situation, my new beliefs of identity gives me a positive outlook on my potential future speaking abilities.  I have always thought that I was a bad speaker and would never be able to command attention and effectively communicate my opinions in front of a large group of people.  However, maybe if with time I become more experienced and comfortable with the many false identites I present, I will become a better speaker.  Maybe I will finally not stumble while speaking.  Maybe.