Although the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) has been used to assist many people in coming to a better understanding of themselves and others, little research has been conducted as to its effectiveness in bringing these individuals into an increased awareness of themselves as professionals. In this thesis, consequently, I show through rhetorical analysis that MBTI acts as a kind of coming-of-age or adult initiation discourse that facilitates a rite of passage on the part of youth and adults in the midst of career transformation. I begin by extracting three major themes of coming-of-age discourse from a recent popular high school commencement speech to exemplify this rhetorical genre, and then I apply these themes to two career manuals based on the MBTI paradigm to illustrate how they fit into the discursive mold of adult initiation. Though each of these works pursues the MBTI exemplar through profoundly different means, I demonstrate that both of these manuals ultimately instill in their readers an affinity for personal and professional self-discovery, which renders important implications as to the nature of constitutive ceremonial discourse in general: As a celebratory and thought-provoking branch of rhetoric, epideixis seems to be particularly useful in instilling values and even action into the many audiences under its influence.
