A Short Introduction to Rhetoric
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Rhetoric refers to persuasive language used to influence audiences. Effective rhetoric uses three appeals: ethos establishes the writer's credibility; pathos appeals to emotions; and logos uses facts and logic. Together these appeals can combine to craft persuasive messages tailored to specific audiences.
A Short Introduction to Rhetoric
- 1. Rhetoric is the Art of Persuasive Language Writers and speakers use Rhetoric to convince readers and listeners to do something or to think something. Think of every time you want to get your way. You are using rhetoric without knowing it!
- 2. The meaning of the word "rhetoric" seems to differ depending on how the word is used and who's using it. You've probably heard politicians some time or another dismiss the positions of their opponents as "mere rhetoric." You're probably also familiar with the idea of a rhetorical question—a question that is meant to make a point and not meant to be answered.
- 3. Here are some classic (and some would say less- than-reputable) examples of rhetoric: ◦ When a politician tries to get you to vote for him, he is using rhetoric. ◦ When a lawyer tries to move a jury, she is using rhetoric. ◦ When a government produces propaganda, it is using rhetoric. ◦ When an advertisement tries to get you to buy something, it is using rhetoric. ◦ When the president gives a speech, he is using rhetoric.
- 4. When someone writes an office memo, he is using rhetoric. When a newspaper writer offers her depiction of what happened last night, she is using rhetoric. When a scientist presents theories or results, she is using rhetoric. When you write your mom or dad an email, you are using rhetoric. And yes, when I'm trying to explain about rhetoric, I'm using rhetoric.
- 5. Rhetoric throughout most of history referred to the arts of speechmaking and oratory. In this class, we will use it to refer to persuasion that occurs through any medium, not just text or speech. Eventually, you start to see all communication as rhetorical—that is, as a set of deliberate, strategic decisions that someone made to achieve a certain purpose with a certain audience.
- 6. A way of thinking about what's involved in any communication/persuasion scenario. The 3 elements of The Rhetorical Triangle are: ◦ a speaker or writer (who performs the rhetoric), ◦ an audience (the people addressed), and ◦ a purpose (the message communicated with the audience)
- 7. Writer/Speaker Audience Purpose/Message
- 8. Aristotle (an ancient Greek philosopher) identified three major tactics that we use when we go about persuading people. We call these tactics rhetorical appeals Aristotle taught that a speaker’s ability to persuade an audience is based on how well the speaker appeals to that audience in three different areas: ◦ ethos ◦ logos ◦ pathos
- 9. refers to the character or authority of the speaker/writer. As an audience, our perception of the speaker/writer's ethos is what leads us to trust them. It involves the trustworthiness and credibility of the speaker/writer Is the speaker/writer dependable? Is he knowledgeable? Can we trust him?
- 10. In many cases ethos is pretty transparent: if Rachel Ray wanted to tell us how to make Chicken Marsala, we would probably just implicitly assume that she knew what she was talking about. After all, she has built her ethos in the sense of authority by demonstrating her cooking abilities every day on nationwide television, in her cookbooks, and through other media. She has also built her ethos in the sense of her character by appearing to be a friendly, savvy, and admirable person. However, if a random person on the street wanted to tell us how to make Chicken Marsala, we would probably first want to know what gave him the authority to do so: did he cook a lot? Does he make chicken marsala often? Why was he qualified to show us? In addition, such a person would probably lack the character component of ethos—being a stranger we would have no connection to him and we would have no sense of who he was as a person. In fact, we'd probably be creeped out by his unsolicited cooking lesson. Ultimately, we would have no reason to trust him.
- 11. An Emotional Appeal Appeal to human emotions (such as desire, passion, or patriotism) within the audience/reader Includes considerations of the values and beliefs in the audience that will ultimately move them to action.
- 12. Home security companies appeal to our fears of violent crime, carbon monoxide, fire, etc. in order to convince us to buy their home monitoring systems. Personal hygiene products appeal to our fears of social rejection and to our desire to fit in with others. Charities appeal to our emotions by showing us images of people that we will empathize with. Casinos appeal to our sense of greed when they try to get us to gamble. And of course, countless advertisements use sex to convince us to buy their products (this is technically eros, but we'll file it under pathos for the sake of simplicity).
- 13. logical argument appeal to reason or logic frequently includes the use of data, statistics, math, research, order, and "objectivity."
- 14. When advertisements claim that their products are “37% more effective than the competition,” they are making an appeal to logos. When a lawyer claims that her client is innocent because he had an alibi, that too is an appeal to logos because it is logically inconsistent for her client to have been in two places at once.
- 15. It's important to recognize that ethos, pathos, and logos appeals are rarely found independently of each other, and that complex and effective persuasion usually involves all of them in some combination.
- 16. For instance, appeals to logos by themselves are rare and seldom effective—they invariably rely on appeals to pathos and ethos as well. If I wrote an essay that included the statement "five people die of AIDS every minute," it doesn't just convey an appeal to logos in the form of a statistic. ◦ It also includes an implicit appeal to pathos: a sense of the emotional tragedy that is AIDS and a sense of the ferocity and terribleness of the disease. ◦ It also includes an implicit appeal to ethos: it establishes my belief in the moral unacceptability of the disease and it may establish admiration in the eyes of my audience for holding such a stance.
- 17. Writer/Speaker Appeal to Ethos (Credibility of Writer) Audience Purpose/Message Appeal to Pathos Appeal to Logos (Emotions, Beliefs, (Facts, Research, Data) and Values)