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What is Rhetoric?
Before we can understand the ways in which the rhetorical appeals work, we must first understand what rhetoric is.
Definition
There are many commonly-used definitions, but for our purposes "rhetoric" refers to all of the following:
- The art of persuasion, and
- The study of the art of persuasion, and
- An individual act of persuasion.
In the work we'll do in our rhetorical analysis, there are 2 parties to be concerned with:
- The rhetor: the party that is attempting to persuade, and
- The audience: the party that is the target of persuasion.
We will consider ourselves to be a 3rd party: The observer. We're not being persuaded. We're not persuading. We're just observing the interaction between the rhetor and the audience.
Examples
A woman pulls her car up to the Starbucks drive-through, and before she can even order her large cup of coffee, the voice on the other end of the speaker says, "Thank you for choosing Starbucks! May I interest you in a low-fat apple-banana bran muffin this morning, paired with a tall skinny soy latte?"
In this situation, the rhetor is the Starbucks employee and the audience is the woman in the car. The rhetor wants to persuade the woman to spend more money on a pricey drink and a healthy-sounding pastry.
It's important for you to remember that rhetorical analysis requires you, the observer, to refrain from taking part in what's going on between the rhetor and the audience. You are the silent third party, so it's not your job to decide if you persuaded by the rhetor; instead, it's your job to decide if the audience would be persuaded by the rhetor.
Three Rhetorical Appeals
"Of the [modes of persuasion] provided through speech there are three species: for some are in the character of the speaker, and some are in disposing the listener in some way, and some in the argument itself, by showing or seeming to show something"
Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 1356b (trans. George A. Kennedy)
In other words, Aristotle argues that there are three elements to the art of persuasion:
- Ethos: The rhetor is perceived by the audience as credible.
- Pathos: The rhetor persuades the audience by making them feel certain emotions.
- Logos: The rhetoric is perceived by the audience as reasonable and as supported by proof
We call these three elements rhetorical appeals.
Below, each of these appeals is explained in more detail.
Ethos
The use of ethos is called an "ethical appeal." Note that this is very different from our usual understanding of the word "ethical." "Ethos" is used to describe the audience's perception of the rhetor's credibility or authority. The audience asks themselves, "What does this person know about this topic?" and "Why should I trust this person?" There are two kinds of ethos:
- extrinsic (the characer, expertise, education, and experience of the rhetor), and
- instrinsic (how the rhetor writes or speaks).
Examples of extrinsic ethos:
Sports: If you are a successful professional basketball player talking about basketball to other pro athletes, then your ethos is strong with that particular audience even before you open your mouth or take pen to paper. Your audience assumes you are knowledgable about your subject because of your experience. If you are a baseball player talking about basketball, instead, then your extrinsic ethos is not as strong because you haven't been played pro basketball, but you're still a professional athlete and know something about that kind of life. If you are a college professor of English, then your extrinsic ethos is likely to be pretty weak with your audience. Change your audience around, however, and the ethos of each hypothetical rhetor might change. An audience of pre-school kids, for example, would have no idea who Michael Jordan is, and so his extrinsic ethos would be weaker with that audience than with the audience of other pro athletes.
Examples of instrinsic ethos:
Sports: Let's say you're that professional basketball player mentioned above, and you start to address your audience and suddenly you stutter and mumble, you get all the rules of basketball wrong ("there's a three-point line?"), and you mispronounce other players' names, and you reveal your ignorance of the history of basketball by mentioning teams that never existed. Suddenly your overall ethos takes a nose-dive with your audience, and you become less persuasive. At the other extreme, let's say you're that English professor, and you speak with confidence and reveal that you know a great deal not only about the intricacies of basketball, but also about individual players' records, and the history and origins of the sport. Your overall ethos, which was weak to begin with because the audience was skeptical of what an English professor would know about their sport, suddenly gets stronger. It gets stronger because your intrinsic ethos goes up in the eyes of your audience.
Pathos
The use of pathos is called a "pathetic appeal." Note that this is very different from our usual understanding of the word "pathetic." "Pathos" is used to describe the rhetor's attempt to appeal to "an audience's sense of identity, their self-interest, and their emotions." If the rhetor can create a common sense of identity with their audience, then the rhetor is using a pathetic appeal.
So if that college English professor above mentions having played basketball in high school and convinces the audience that she or he was pretty good, then not only does that fact strengthen the rhetor's ethos, it also makes a pathetic appeal. (This is also why so many politicans will open their speeches with "My fellow Americans..." This is why Senator John McCain uses the phrase "My friends..." so much when speaking to audiences.)
"Pathos" most often refers to an attempt to engage an audience's emotions. Think about the different emotions people are capable of feeling: they include love, pity, sorrow, affection, anger, fear, greed, lust, and hatred. If a rhetor tries to make an audience feel emotions in response to what is being said or written, then they are using pathos.
Let's say a rhetor is trying to convince an audience of middle-class Americans to donate money to a hurricane relief fund. The rhetor can make pathetic appeals to an audience's feelings of love, pity, fear, and perhaps anger. (The extent to which any of these emotions will be successfully engaged will vary from audience to audience.)
- "Love" will be felt if the audience can be made to believe in their fundamental connections to other human beings.
- "Pity" will be felt if the plight of the homeless hurricane victim can be made very vivid to the audience.
- "Fear" will be felt if the audience can be made to imagine what they would feel like in that homeless victim's place.
- "Anger" will be felt if the audience realizes how little has been done by those who are resonsible for helping.
If the rhetor works all of these things together properly (and also doesn't screw up ethos and logos), then the audience is more likely to be persuaded.
Logos
The use of logos is called a "logical appeal." A statement does not have to be considered logical to be a logical appeal. We use the term logos to describe what kind of rhetorical appeal is being made, not to evaluate whether or not an appeal makes sense. "Logos" is the use of the strategies of logic to persuade your audience. If an statement attempts to persuade the audience by making a reasonable claim and offering proof in support of that claim (rather than by trying to make them feel certain emotions, or by making them perceive the speaker as credible), then that statement is a locial argument. There are many ways of making logical arguments. Here are a few common strategies:
Syllogism
A claim using deductive logic involving a major premise, a minor premise, and conclusion. This is a move from the general to the specific.
Examples:
Nuclear power plants generate dangerous nuclear waste, the new power plant they're planning to build in our community is a nuclear power plant. So the new power plant will be dangerous.
Republicans favor deregulation. John McCain is a Republican, so he will pursue a policy of deregulation if elected.
Democrats like to "tax and spend." Barack Obama is a Democrat, so he's going to raise our taxes if elected.
Support a generalization with examples
A claim using inductive logic, where a general statement about something is backed up by specific examples.
Examples:
In the second presidential debate of 2008, Senator John McCain emphasized his own good judgment in this way: "And I am convinced that my record, going back to my opposition from sending the Marines to Lebanon, to supporting our efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia and the first Gulf War, and my judgment, I think, is something that ... I'm willing to stand on."
In the second presidentail debate of 2008, Senator Barack Obama argued that the United States should maintain good relations with other nations in order to make the best use of our own military resources in a time of economic constraint. He then illustrated his general statement with this specific example: "Let's take the example of Darfur just for a moment. Right now there's a peacekeeping force that has been set up and we have African Union troops in Darfur to stop a genocide that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. We could be providing logistical support, setting up a no-fly zone at relatively little cost to us, but we can only do it if we can help mobilize the international community and lead."
Cause or consequence
A claim about one thing causing another, or one thing being caused by another.
Examples:
Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases being produced by humankind.
The current economic crisis was caused primarily by deregulation of the financial industry.
If the government gets involved in providing health insurance to the American people, we will see a sharp decline in the quality of our medical care.
Analogy
A claim about the qualities of one thing using a comparison about another thing.
Examples:
The ozone layer of the atmosphere is like the outer layer of skin on the human body, and if it goes away, planet Earth will be in a lot of pain.
Going to that class is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
"George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise." (Al Gore, 1992 Vice Presidential Debate)
That candidate is what we call a post turtle. Imagine you're driving along a country road and you see a turtle up on top of a fence post. He doesn't know how he got there. He doesn't know what he's doing there. And he has no idea what to do next. (See this entry at Snopes.com)
Testimony and authority
A claim that involves citing the opinion of someone other than the rhetor, someone respected by the audience.
Examples:
4 out of 5 Dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum (Trident Gum advertisement).
The leading U.S. military commanders in Iraq say the surge strategy is working.
How bad is the current financial mess? According to Alan Greenspan it's “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century” ("Greenspan").
Definition
A claim about the meaning or nature of something.
Examples:
The Soviet Union is an evil empire.
Marriage is only a union between a man with a woman.
Combining all 3 rhetorical appeals
Seldom is any one statement an example of only one appeal.
"I have to tell you that if you don't stop smoking, you're going to die, " said the doctor to her patient.
This statement combines all three appeals:
- Extrinsic ethos: the rhetor is an expert on the subject
- Pathos: attempting to make the audience feel fear
- Logos: using the strategy of "Cause or Consequence"
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