Rhetorical Persuasion

In order for anybody to succeed, whether they can define rhetoric or not, they must understand how to use ethos, pathos, and logos in their everyday life. Rhetoric itself is a greek word, which when used in the english language is actually a form of logos, because for some reason, people who speak english are typically fascinated by foreign words. By assigning the class a blog on defining rhetoric, our professor has used logos to persuade the class that this assignment is scholarly, further promoting the students to spend some extra time on this work. 

I am certain that the majority of the world's population have no idea what rhetoric is, yet everyone has used it in their lives in one form or another. Communication is impossible without rhetoric, and therefore everyone who speaks or expresses themselves is using rhetoric to capture someone's attention. 

Ethos is in play when a person of reputation uses that reputation to persuade people that what that person is saying is important. When ethos is apparent, that person might not be using supportive information or emotion to enforce their topic, but rely solely on the power of their self. An example of an ethos driven work could be when the president of the United States makes an announcement, before he even speaks, in general, the audience is rapt with attention toward him, for he is the president, and therefore what he has to say must be important. 

Pathos is the most common form of communication through out the world, and also the most powerful. Pathos is the form of communication through emotion. Emotion is the only universal human language, which is what makes pathos so incredible. Two people who cannot speak the same tongue will know exactly how the other feels based on their body language. This is not to say that pathos is only expressed through body language, words also invoke emotional decisions out of us. Lets use the "Fund a Child" commercials we commonly see on TV, with the older gentleman and the starving children sleeping in shacks made of cardboard as a good example of utilizing pathos. The older gentleman does not give the audience data to back up his plea for the audience to donate their money to poor children, nor does he use his reputation (I can't even remember his name), but instead he shows clips of small children crying and starving without shoes in a muddy alley. This is all he needs to get a higher majority of the audience to donate to these children. Pathos, is often the best form of persuasion for this reason. 

Logos, is more typically used within companies or organizations. Logos is a person's use of logic and information to support what they are conveying. The reason logos is best used in companies and organizations is because data and information often do not make much sense to the general public, but for those who understand what the data entails, will be more easily persuaded to support or deny the data. A good example of when logos is best utilized is in Academia. In class, for example, you learn every single element on the periodic table and run an experiment on how two of those elements react under intense heat. Your write up may be trying to persuade the professor that those two elements may react to create a cure for cancer. By discussing scientific jargon in your paper, your professor may be more convinced that your results are accurate than if you were to base your write up on an emotional or reputational standpoint. 

I hope that by reading my overview and analysis of Rhetoric, for those people in the class that were a little confused on the application of ethos, pathos, and logos, and for my professor who wants me to understand rhetoric in the written world, this blog has successfully achieved what it was meant to.