Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Pathos Example

"If we don't move soon, we're all going to die! Can't you see how dangerous it would be to stay?"

Logos Example

"You should become an organ donor because, according to research by the Mayo Clinic, a single donor can save or improve as many as fifty lives."

Ethos Example

"our book club should read this book because Oprah recommended it."

Pathos (Playing with Emotions)

APPEAL TO EMOTION. This persuasive strategy attempts to activate certain emotions in the audience in order to make the audience more or less favorable toward a given position.

Logos (Logic)

APPEAL TO REASON. This is a persuasive strategy that uses logic and evidence to make its argument.

Ethos (Experience)

APPEAL TO REPUTATION. This persuasive strategy that uses someone's credibility- often that of the speaker themselves- to make an argument. The speaker may build credibility by referring to their credentials or experience or by establishing their character through what they say.

Mixing and Matching

Few arguments use only logos, pathos, or ethos. Aristotle believes that the strongest arguments use all three. But many arguments tend toward one or the other.

Logical Fallacies with Pathos

If you are arguing about a matter of reason, then pathos is the wrong strategy to use, because the way you feel about a fact is irrelevant to it being so or not.

Establishing Shared Values

In many circumstances, a speaker may not have a status or credential that lends their argument force. But they can still built credibility by emphasizing the values they share with their audience. (Advertisers and Politicians do this when they say they value family or independence or community or tradition.)

Humor (Emotional Appeal)

Jokes can help warm an audience to the speaker. Effective emotional appeals can help get the audience on your side or put them in a frame of mind to consider your argument. This can be a harmless way to add personal appeal to an otherwise logically sound argument. Or it could mask the lack of a substantial argument, as in advertisements that make you laugh but don't actually make a case for their product.

Connotation (Emotional Appeal)

The connotations of a word are the associations that we tend to make with the word, idea, or image, rather than the literal definition of the word. Word connotations allow the speaker to evoke certain emotional associations.

Explaining Your Credentials or Background

The speaker has or believes they have relevant credentials, but the audience doesn't know it yet. In this case, the speaker has to convey their background and why it matters.

Automatic Ethos

This is credibility or persuasive force conferred by your status or title. You don't really have to work to establish automatic ethos. If you have that, people already know your credentials and understand why they matter. For the speaker, automatic ethos is a persuasive freebie.

Amygdala

This is the part of our brains that is responsible for fear- tend to drive impulsive action that overrides reason.

Personal Stories and Associations

When a speaker acknowledges their humanity by telling a relevant (or even irrelevant!) personal story, we tend to relate to them as an individual rather than the source of an argument, and this is ultimately an emotional response (though it has something to do with ethos, too, as you can imagine). There is a reason most public speaking teachers will recommend that you do this; like humor, it can help get the audience on your side. A speaker may also tell someone else's personal story to ground an otherwise abstract argument in an emotionally charged particular. As an example, think of ads designed to discourage you from texting while driving, which might tell the story of a particular individual who lost their life as a result. Logically, this is weak, since you can't generalize outcomes from a particular incident, but emotionally, it may be powerful.

Aristotelian Appeals

ethos, pathos, logos