Whenever you read an argument you should ask yourself: Is this persuasive? And if so, to whom? How is it trying to persuade readers? There are three primary modes of appeal that people can use to persuade an audience. You can make a rhetorical appeal by trying to manipulate someone's emotions (pathos), convincing someone you are a credible, honest, and ethical source (ethos), or by offering original data or convincing evidence (logos). These appeals are intrinsic to all arguments or assertions, and often times you will discover that an effective source text uses a little bit of all of them.
Possible features of the three modes | ||
| To Appeal to Moral Philosophy or Credulity (ethos) | To Appeal to Emotion (pathos) | To Appeal to Logic or Reason (logos) |
| Language appropriate to audience and subject Restrained, sincere, fair minded presentation Appropriate level of vocabulary Clear Articulation Multiple presented perspectives
| Vivid, concrete language Emotionally loaded language Connotative meanings Emotional examples Vivid descriptions Narratives of emotional events Emotional tone Figurative language | Theoretical, abstract language Denotative meanings/reasons Literal and historical analogies Definitions Factual data and statistics Quotations Citations from experts and authorities Informed opinions |
| <>How can you use these appeals? | ||
Ethos | Pathos | Logos |
Demonstrate reliability, credibility, and a correct moral philosophy. Consider your wardrobe, your tone of voice, and general presentation while considering the type of audience you are facing. You can also try to persuade readers and observers by challenging the reader or observer's reliability, credibility, or moral philosophy. | Draw audience in by offering emotionally charged reasoning with vivid visuals that affect the audience's emotions. This rhetorical appeal is often used to elicit a specific emotional response, such as: outrage, anger, sadness, happiness, desire, etc. The hope is that if the reader or observer feels the emotional response they will be persuaded. | Attempt to provide sufficient evidence from empirical sources and sound reasoning. Avoid using logical fallacies. Logos is matter–of–fact. Provide statistics and a reliable interpretation of precise research. This type of appeal is very useful and if used appropriately can be extremely effective for persuading people to believe something. |
Ethos: Ethos is related to the English word ethics and refers to the trustworthiness of the speaker/writer. Ethos is an effective persuasive strategy because when we believe that the speaker does not intend to do us harm or is highly reliable, we are more willing to listen to what s/he has to say. For example, when a trusted doctor gives you advice, you may not understand all of the medical reasoning behind the advice, but you nonetheless follow the directions because you believe that the doctor knows what s/he is talking about. Likewise, when a judge comments on legal precedent, audiences tend to listen because it is the job of a judge to know past legal cases. Considering your ethos is critical to getting your audience to take you seriously. You might make all the sense in the world, but if you look unreliable your ethos failed to persuade your audience.
Pathos: Pathos is related to the words pathetic, sympathy and empathy. Whenever you accept an claim based on how it makes you feel without fully analyzing the rationale behind the claim, you are acting on pathos. In the same way, when you make an argument that attempts to persuade people only by invoking an emotional reaction in them, you are using pathos. This can be done with any emotion: love, fear, patriotism, guilt, hate or joy. Many texts from the modern press or politicians are heavily dependent on pathos appeals. Appeals to pathos touch an emotional nerve and compel people to not only listen, but to also take the next step and act in the world.
Logos: The Greek word logos is the basis for the English word logic. Logos is a broader idea than formal logic--the highly symbolic and mathematical logic that you might study in a philosophy course. Logos refers to any attempt to appeal to the intellect, the general meaning of 'logical argument.' Everyday arguments rely heavily on ethos and pathos, but academic arguments rely more on logos. These arguments engage readers or observers by appealing to reason, logic, and data.
Link to list of fallacies..
 | Who is the audience this ad is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not?
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 | Who is the audience this ad is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
 | Who is the audience is this poster is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
 | Who is the audience is this poster is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
 | Who is the audience is this poster is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
 | Who is the audience this ad is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
| Who is the audience this ad is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What role does historical context play in this image? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
| Who is the audience is this poster is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
| Who is the audience is this poster is attempting to reach? What reaction does this ad elicit from you? What is the text emphasizing or not? What Rhetorical appeals are more prominent in this image? |
American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century by Rank
The Best American Science and Nature Writing Series
Organizations by Issue | |
I would like you to examine these similar yet very different organizations for their use of Rhetorical Appeal and Situation. How effective are these websites? Who is the intended audience? What are their primary purposes? Which Rhetorical Appeals do these websites use to engage their audience? | |
Women | Independent Women's Forum |
Liberal Politics | Liberal Rant |
Conservative Politics | Open Letter to Barak Obama |
Environmental | Climate Change Fraud Watchsite |
Frederick Douglass's 4th of July Speech in Rochester, New York (1852)
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon tospeak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with yournational independence? Are the great principles of political freedom andof natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence,extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humbleoffering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and expressdevout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence tous? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmativeanswer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would mytask be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there socold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate anddead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledgesuch priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not givehis voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when thechains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. Ina case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the 'lame manleap as an hart.' But such is not the state of the case. I say it with asad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale ofthis glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals theimmeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this dayrejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice,liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers isshared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing toyou has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours,not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters intothe grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join youin joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do youmean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there isa parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous tocopy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up toheaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying thatnation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear themournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday,are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reachthem. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children ofsorrow this day, 'may my right hand forget her cunning, and may mytongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!'
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in withthe popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, andwould make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is 'American Slavery.' I shall seethis day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view.Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongsmine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the characterand conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on thisFourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professionsof the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous andrevolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, andsolemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God andthe crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name ofhumanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered,in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded andtrampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all theemphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery --the great sin and shame of America! 'I will not equivocate - I will notexcuse.' I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not oneword shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded byprejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess tobe right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in thiscircumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make afavorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more anddenounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause wouldbe much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain thereis nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would youhave me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of thiscountry need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man?That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holdersthemselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government.They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of theslave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, ifcommitted by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him tothe punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes willsubject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral,intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave isconceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books arecovered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties,the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to anysuch laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent toargue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when thefowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of thesea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish theslave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negrorace. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, andreaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses,constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron,copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, andciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among uslawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, andteachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men-- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific,feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting,thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children,and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and lookinghopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are calledupon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is therightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must Iargue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans?Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matterbeset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of theprinciple of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in thepresence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to showthat men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively andpositively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to makemyself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. Thereis not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slaveryis wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them oftheir liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant oftheir relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flaytheir flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt themwith dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knockout their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience andsubmission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked withblood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I havebetter employment for my time and strength than such arguments wouldimply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; thatGod did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken?There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot bedivine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - Icannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, isneeded. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, Iwould today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blastingreproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light thatis needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We needthe storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nationmust be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; thepropriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nationmust be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day thatreveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injusticeand cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebrationis a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your nationalgreatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty andheartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; yourprayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all yourreligious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud,deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes whichwould disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earthguilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people ofthese United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotismsof the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuseand when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of theeveryday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, forrevolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without arival.
Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852
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