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Course Notes The Three Appeals (changes)
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The Three Appeals
Some Backgrond
- Coming from Aristotle’s early work (On Rhetoric) on defining rhetoric, these were the three major ways of making an argument compelling to listeners.
- Protagoras (a Sophist) sez “Rhetoric is that which makes a weak argument into a strong argument”.
- The three appeals are a scientific model of how this transformation happens
- Still widely used.
The Rhetorical Triangle
Rhetoric is an occasion for a three-way exchange of ideas. This also comes from Aristotle and defines the rhetorical triangle, which has three elements:
The writer and the reader are interacting in rhetoric but this interaction is always mediated through the text.
Forces us to understand the importance of the text and its composition to the spreading of our ideas.
What are they?
- ethos – Ethical appeals that establish the author or speaker as ethical, fair-minded, and knowledgeable of the subject. In more modern contexts, ethos refers to the usage of someone’s reputation (of knowledge, of trustworthiness, or of general aptitude or likability) to heighten the strength of an argument.
- Good: Can make you seem: more humane, more fair, sincere
- Bad: Gives the impression of insincerity or foolishness
- logos – Logical appeals that make use of well-constructed claims and cold, hard facts to build a better understanding of the correctness of author’s position.
- Good: Build a case to people that disagree with you on an emotional / ethical level that your position is correct.
- Bad: Can lead to over-generalizations, logical fallacies
- pathos – Emotional appeals that appeal to some more basic human characteristics than ethics or logic (fear, pity, happiness, and most definitely sex).
- Good: Provide a specific emotional image that lasts longer and adds to the weight of the facts or ethics
- Bad: Often used (quite effectively) to cover up shoddy logical or ethical arguments.
These three appeals also map onto the rhetorical triangle:
We can see that ethos shapes the writer, logos shapes the text, and pathos shapes the reader.
What do we do with them?
- Rhetoric of / as pure evil: most of the bad usages of rhetoric can make you a highly effective rhetorician, this has been a problem since Socrates (mention Protagoras debate).
- Story about dioxin from Daniel Pinchbeck. Published in NYT claiming that certain fertilizers have been lowering sperm count of humans for generations (due to run off into water supply). Dupont issues statement claiming that sperm count higher in NY than LA. Everyone has a good laugh, but issue still exists. This is a misuse of pathos (but it worked).
- In Yr Papers: Mix the three appeals in a way that creates an effective argument
- Don’t have to use all three
- May use the three in different ways (pathos to appeal to sex and religion in the same argument).
Let’s watch TV!
TV ads are very good source of the three appeals:
Pathos:
Logos:
Ethos:
Sources:
- http://www.uwc.ucf.edu/Writing%20Resources/Handouts/appeals.htm