arnam StreetExit Reader Mode

Ethos, Logos and Pathos: The Structure

3 years ago

“A speech is like a love affair. Any fool can start it, but to end it req
uires considerable skill.”
— Lord Mancroft
***
The structure of a great oral argument has been passed down through
the ages, starting with Aristotle. Not only is it an incredibly valuable s
kill to have, it’s important to know how you’re being persuaded when
you’re a part of the audience. So using Sam Leith’s Words Like Loaded
Pistols as our guide, let’s discuss Aristotle’s three modes of pe
rsuasion: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.
But before we get into the specifics of the three modes, we need to de
cide on the structure of our argument itself. How? By doing the work
required to have an opinion.
This phase is referred to as invention, but it’s not about making somet
hing up, it’s more about the information gathering or research phase o
f your work.
Invention is doing your homework: thinking up in advance exactly wha
t arguments can be made both for and against a given proposition, sel
ecting the best on your own side, and finding counterarguments to tho
se on the other.
This research phase should not be limited to the subject matter, it sho
uld also include your audience. If there is one theme that resona
tes throughout Leith’s book, it’s that you must know your au
dience; their interests, prejudices and expectations. Without th
at grounding, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. (In other w
ords, your moving speech on why we all need to take a social media h
oliday may not resonate at the Twitter shareholder meeting.)
Ethos is about establishing your authority to speak on the subject, logo
s is your logical argument for your point and pathos is your attempt t
o sway an audience emotionally. Leith has a great example for summar
izing what the three look like.
Ethos: ‘Buy my old car because I’m Tom Magliozzi.’ Logos: ‘Buy my ol
d car because yours is broken and mine is the only one on sale.’ Patho
s: ‘Buy my old car or this cute little kitten, afflicted with a rare degene
rative disease, will expire in agony, for my car is the last asset I have i
n the world, and I am selling it to pay for kitty’s medical treatment.’
Ethos
The first part of ethos is establishing your credentials to be speaking t
o the audience on the specific subject matter. It’s the verbal equivalent
of all those degrees hanging up in your doctor’s office. And once you’v
e established why you are an authority on the subject, you need to bui
ld rapport. Ethos, when everything is stripped away, is about trust.
Your audience needs to know (or to believe, which in rhetoric adds up
to the same thing) that you are trustworthy, that you have a locus stan
di to talk on the subject, and that you speak in good faith. You need y
our audience to believe that you are, in the well-known words, ‘A prett
y straight kind of guy.’
So if you’re a politician and you’re speaking about reforming the legal
system, it’s great to be a lawyer or a judge, but it’s even better to be a
lawyer or a judge who comes from the same community as your audi
ence. Between two speakers with identical credentials, the mo
re closely relatable one will win the audience.
You’ll even see a reverse ethos appeal at times, an attack on an oppon
ent which questions their credentials and trustworthiness and serves to
alienate them from the audience. To head that off, it’s best to establish
your ethos early on, both to give your attackers more of a challenge a
nd to create a hook for your logos to hang on.
Logos
Here’s how Leith describes logos, the next link in the chain:
If ethos is the ground on which your argument stands, logos is what d
rives it forward: it is the stuff of your arguments, the way one point p
roceeds to another, as if to show that the conclusion to which you are
aiming is not only the right one, but so necessary and reasonable as to
be more or less the only one.
Think of this as the logic behind your argument. You want your points
to seem so straightforward and commanding that your audience can’t
conceive of an alternative.
Aristotle had a tip here: He found that the most effective use of logos
is to encourage your audience to reach the conclusion to your argumen
t on their own, just moments before your big reveal. They will relish i
n the fact that they were clever enough to figure it out, and the reveal
will be that much more satisfying.
Another logos trick used often is the much abused syllogism.
The syllogism is a way of combining two premises and drawing a fresh
conclusion that follows logically from them. The classic instance you a
lways hear quoted is the following: All men are mortal. Socrates is a
man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
While you need to take care with the syllogisms you use — false syllog
isms can lead to obvious logical fallacies — they can be a powerful tool
for helping your audience draw certain conclusions.
Aristotle also advocated the use ‘commonplaces’, or accepted premises
shared with the audience. The best arguments are soaked in them.
Associated with these general topics are ‘commonplaces’ (topos is Gree
k for a ‘place’). Any form of reasoning has to start from a set of premi
ses, and in rhetoric those premises are very often commonplaces. A co
mmonplace is a piece of shared wisdom: a tribal assumption. In the us
e of commonplaces, you can see where logos and ethos intersect.
Commonplaces are culturally specific, but they will tend to be so deep-
rooted in their appeal that they pass for universal truths. They are, in
digested form, the appeal to ‘common sense.’ You get nowhere appeali
ng to commonplaces alien to your audience.
The wise persuader starts from one or two commonplaces he knows he
has in common with his audience – and, where possible, arrives at on
e too.
Your use of commonplaces is also a good point to interject pathos, as
many of these common beliefs can illicit an emotional response. Let’s
dig into pathos.
Pathos
Your logical argument will be that much more persuasive if it’s wrappe
d up with a good dose of emotion. Because of the way we use the wor
d pathos in the modern world, you may be thinking of something dra
matic and sad. But pathos is more nuanced than that; it can be humor
, love, patriotism, or any emotional response.
The key here once again is to know your audience. If you are tryin
g to evoke a sense of anger or sadness regarding mankind’s role in the
decline of the honeybee, you might not get the response you want fro
m the bee allergy support group.
You can even invoke pathos by admitting a wrong. (We all make mist
akes…) This can be a clever way to put your opponent off balance.
This is the figure, called paromologia in the Greek, where you concede,
or appear to concede, part of your opponent’s point. It turns what is
often necessity to advantage, because it makes you look honest and scr
upulous, takes the wind out of your opponent’s sails, and allows you to
shift the emphasis of the argument in a way finally favorable to you.
It’s the equivalent of a tactical retreat, or of the judo fighter using an
opponent’s momentum against him.
Another tool you can use with pathos is something the ancients called
aposiopesis.
Aposiopesis – a sudden breaking off as if at a loss for words – can be
intended to stir pathos. And even where something appears merely dec
orative – a run of alliteration or a mellifluously turned sentence – it s
erves to commend the speech more easily to memory, and to give plea
sure to the audience. Delight is an end, as well as a means.
And we can’t forget joy and laughter. A well received joke can help yo
u both connect with the audience (ethos) and bring home the pathos a
ppeal.
… the joke can do more than just perk up a drowsing audience. It can
be a powerful rhetorical tool. It participates in the pathos appeal inasm
uch as it stirs an audience’s emotions to laughter – but more importan
tly, it participates in the ethos appeal, inasmuch as laughter is based o
n a set of common assumptions. As Edwin Rabbie argues in ‘Wit and
Humour in Roman Rhetoric,’ ‘Jokes usually presuppose (even rest on)
a significant amount of shared knowledge.
Ultimately, the three modes of persuasion are interconnected. It’s helpf
ul not to think of them in a linear way but more like three overlappin
g circles. If you can create something with ethos, logos, and pathos pe
ppered throughout, and tie it all into your audience’s belief system, yo
u will have a very strong argument.
While Aristotle’s three persuasive appeals make appearances throughout
the book, there is so much more to Words Like Loaded Pistols. Leith
goes into depth regarding the five parts of rhetoric and the three branc
hes of oratory. He also spend considerable time explaining the differen
t figures, also known as the ‘flowers of rhetoric, which can be thought
of as the literary weapons you can use in your war of words. If you ha
ve an interest in making your own presentations or speeches better, or
in understanding the techniques a speaker is using when you are in th
e audience then this book is definitely worth the read. In the meantim
e check out our post on Wartime Rhetoric for some inspiration