Persuasive Appeals

Objective: Recognize and Classify the use of rhetorical devices in written, spoken, or

presented sources.

YOU NEED TO WRITE EVERYTHING IN BLACK!

What are the appeals?• Rhetoric: writing or speech that is used to

convince or persuade an audience to do or believe something.

• Rhetorical devices: techniques used to convince or persuade, i.e. to win an audience over.

Ethos•   Definition: rhetoric used to establish the speaker as

an authority on the subject matter; i.e. an expert. • In other words,

– Credibility/Expertise/Believability/Trustworthiness. – Appealing to authority– How believable is a person and why?

• Who would have more ethos when performing a heart surgery?: – A Dentist– A Cardiologist

Methods for showing ethos in writing• Appear well informed & confident about the topic, sincere

& honest.

• Avoid overly emotional language or tone

• Delineate experience in the topic

Pathos• Definition:A quality, as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses

feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow. Appeal in which the speaker tries to manipulate your emotions or make you feel a certain way. (aka emotional appeal)

• In other words: Feeling, Empathy, Sympathy• Which advertisement has more pathos?

Children and families are fighting for survival in an area facing severe drought and the deadly threat of famine.

The all new Mazda six goes from zero to sixty in 4.7 seconds, comes fully equipped with front and rear side air bags and an optional sunroof.

Methods for using pathos in writing

• Use word choice (diction), imagery, and tone to influence a person’s emotions (usually diction with strong connotation).

• Most common emotions exploited by pathos appeal: happiness/love, fear.

• Consider what you want the outcome of your persuasion to be in order to determine the best emotion to manipulate.

Logos•  Definition: Logic, reasoning, rational ideas based on

facts, statistics, or observations that can be proved or disproved.– Induction (Inductive reasoning)

• Specific Example Generalization• Example: 3 people who ate the potato salad got sick. Therefore, the

potato salad makes people sick. • Allows for the possibility of logical fallacy

– Deduction (deductive reasoning) • Generalization Specific Example • Example: All mailmen get up early in the morning and wear blue

pants. Jim is a mailman. Therefore, Jim gets up early in the morning and wears blue pants.

• Important for making predictions – but must allow for exceptions.

Methods for using Logos in writing

• Use strong clear evidence (i.e. statistics, facts, etc.) to back up your opinion. – Make it clear HOW & WHY the evidence

proves the point.

Logos• Fallacy: an argument based on faulty logic

or irrelevant information (a.k.a. an untruth).– Fallacy is related to the word FALSE – Fallacies are the most common root of

prejudice. Examples of Logical Fallacies:

• The use of toothpaste promotes good dental hygiene. So if you want good dental hygiene, you should use Colgate toothpaste. (Fallacy of Relevance)

• Vegetables are part of a healthy diet, therefore the double bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and tomatoes is part of a healthy diet.

• There are 3 teachers with red hair who are mean, therefore all teachers with red hair are mean. (inductive reasoning gone wrong!)

• When it rains, the ground becomes wet; since the ground is wet, it must have rained. (deductive reasoning)

• All humans are mammals. (premise)All cats are mammals. (premise)All humans are cats. (conclusion)

Your Turn!

• Using what you now know about your research topic, write an example of each type of appeal (ethos, pathos, logos) that you could possibly use in your persuasive paper. Label each example.