Rhetorical Appeals: Connecting with a “Real” Audience

2400 years ago, Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote the first “textbook” on persuasion in the Western world. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle outlined three ways a speaker could persuade an audience.^[1] These three strategies, which Aristotle called the “artistic proofs,” are known by the Greek terms ethos, pathos, and logos.

Ethos (think ethics) is an appeal to the character of the speaker or writer. Appealing to ethos is all about using credibility, either your own as a writer or of your sources, in order to be persuasive. Essentially, ethos is about believability. Will your audience find you believable? What can you do to ensure that they do? You can establish ethos—or credibility—in two basic ways: you can use or build your own credibility on a topic, or you can use credible sources, which, in turn, builds your credibility as a writer.

Here are some ways you can use the power of ethos in your writing:

• If you have specific experience or education related to your issues, mention it in some way.
• If you don’t have specific experience or education related to your issue, make sure you find sources from authors who do. When you integrate that source information, it’s best if you can address the credibility of your sources. When you have credible sources, you want to let your audience know about them.
• Use a tone of voice that is appropriate to your writing situation and will make you sound reasonable and credible as a writer. Controversial issues can often bring out some extreme emotions in us when we write, but we have to be careful to avoid sounding extreme in our writing, especially in academic arguments. You may not convince everyone to agree with you, but you at least need your audience to listen to what you have to say.
• Proofread your work carefully. Unfairly or not, there are situations in which errors, typos, and misspellings seem to erode the credibility of the author. Some employers, for instance, consider errors on an applicant’s resume to be a sign of carelessness or lack of attention to detail. (Martin-Lacroux and Lacroux) And according to one recent study, language errors made people seem less attractive on a dating site. (Van der Zanden et al.)

Pathos (think empathy) appeals to the emotions of the audience. Because people can be easily moved by their emotions, pathos is a powerful mode of persuasion. When you think about appealing to pathos, you should consider all of the potential emotions people experience. While we often see or hear arguments that appeal to sympathy or anger, appealing to pathos is not limited to these specific emotions. You can also use emotions such as humor, joy or even frustration, to note a few, in order to convince your audience. It’s important, however, to be careful when appealing to pathos, as arguments with an overly-strong focus on emotion are not considered as credible in an academic setting. This means you could, and should, use pathos, but you have to do so carefully. An overly-emotional argument can cause you to lose your credibility as a writer.

With the power of pathos in mind, here are some strategies you can use to carefully build pathos in your arguments.

• Think about the emotions most related to your topic in order to use those emotions effectively. For example, if you’re calling for change in animal abuse laws, you would want to appeal to your audience’s sense of sympathy, possibly by providing examples of animal cruelty. If your argument is focused on environmental issues related to water conservation, you might provide examples of how water shortages affect metropolitan areas in order to appeal to your audience’s fear of a similar occurrence.
• In an effort to appeal to pathos, use examples to illustrate your position. Just be sure the examples you share are credible and can be verified.
• When presenting evidenced based on emotion, maintain an even tone. If you sound too emotional, you might lose your audience’s respect.

Logos (think logic) uses a well-reasoned argument to appeal to your audience’s logical side. As writers, we appeal to logos by presenting a line of reasoning in our arguments that is logical and clear. We use evidence, such as statistics and factual information, when we appeal to logos.

As you work to build logos in your arguments, here are some strategies to keep in mind.

• Remember to think about your audience as you appeal to logos. Just because something makes sense in your mind, doesn’t mean it will make the same kind of sense to your audience. You need to try to see things from your audience’s perspective. Having others read your writing, especially those who might disagree with your position, is helpful.
• Be sure to maintain clear lines of reasoning throughout your argument. One error in logic can negatively impact your entire position. When you present faulty logic, you lose credibility.

Strike a Balance

An effective argument will have a balance of ethos, pathos, and logos. Appealing to ethos alone might work for celebrity endorsements, but it quickly falls apart under logical scrutiny. Credentials, expertise, or experience are not enough if the argument itself is flawed. At the same time, however, a perfectly-reasoned argument won’t persuade anyone if it doesn’t engage them somehow. There’s a reason that so many political speeches tell individual stories. Touting the COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill in his first State of the Union address, President Biden didn’t use statistics and formulas to argue for the efficacy of stimulus spending, but rather described “a single mom in Texas who wrote to me, she said she couldn’t work, but she said the relief check put food on the table and saved her and her son from eviction from their apartment.” (Biden) Although it’s important to find an emotional connection with your reader, there can also be a danger in appealing only to emotions. A demagogue is a leader who “gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions, prejudice, and ignorance to arouse some against others, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation” (wikipedia). Infamous demagogues like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and Joseph McCarthy stand as stark reminders of the catastrophic potential of manipulative and unethical appeals to pathos.