“A speech is like a love affair. Any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.” Show *** The structure of a great oral argument has been passed down through the ages, starting with Aristotle. Not only is it an incredibly valuable skill 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 persuasion: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. But before we get into the specifics of the three modes, we need to decide 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 something up, it’s more about the information gathering or research phase of your work.
This research phase should not be limited to the subject matter, it should also include your audience. If there is one theme that resonates throughout Leith’s book, it’s that you must know your audience; their interests, prejudices and expectations. Without that grounding, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. (In other words, your moving speech on why we all need to take a social media holiday may not resonate at the Twitter shareholder meeting.) Ethos is about establishing your authority to speak on the subject, logos is your logical argument for your point and pathos is your attempt to sway an audience emotionally. Leith has a great example for summarizing what the three look like.
EthosThe first part of ethos is establishing your credentials to be speaking to 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’ve established why you are an authority on the subject, you need to build rapport. Ethos, when everything is stripped away, is about trust.
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 audience. Between two speakers with identical credentials, the more closely relatable one will win the audience. You’ll even see a reverse ethos appeal at times, an attack on an opponent 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 and to create a hook for your logos to hang on. LogosHere’s how Leith describes logos, the next link in the chain:
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 argument on their own, just moments before your big reveal. They will relish in 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.
While you need to take care with the syllogisms you use — false syllogisms 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.
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. PathosYour logical argument will be that much more persuasive if it’s wrapped up with a good dose of emotion. Because of the way we use the word pathos in the modern world, you may be thinking of something dramatic 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 trying 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 from the bee allergy support group. You can even invoke pathos by admitting a wrong. (We all make mistakes…) This can be a clever way to put your opponent off balance.
Another tool you can use with pathos is something the ancients called aposiopesis.
And we can’t forget joy and laughter. A well received joke can help you both connect with the audience (ethos) and bring home the pathos appeal.
Ultimately, the three modes of persuasion are interconnected. It’s helpful not to think of them in a linear way but more like three overlapping circles. If you can create something with ethos, logos, and pathos peppered throughout, and tie it all into your audience’s belief system, you 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 branches of oratory. He also spend considerable time explaining the different 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 have an interest in making your own presentations or speeches better, or in understanding the techniques a speaker is using when you are in the audience then this book is definitely worth the read. In the meantime check out our post on Wartime Rhetoric for some inspiration.
What is logos? Here’s a quick and simple definition:
Some additional key details about logos:
How to Pronounce LogosHere's how to pronounce logos: loh-gos Logos and Different Types of ProofWhile it's easy to spot a speaker using logos when he or she presents statistics or research results, numerical data is only one form that logos can take. Logos is any statement, sentence, or argument that attempts to persuade using facts, and these facts need not be the result of long research. "The facts" of an argument can also be drawn from the speaker's own life or from the world at large, and presenting these examples to support one's view is also a form of logos. Take this example from Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech in support of women's rights:
Truth points to her own strength, as well as to the fact that she can perform physically tiring tasks just as well as a man, as proof of equality between the sexes: she's still appealing to the audience's reason, but instead of presenting abstract truths about reality or numerical evidence, she's presenting the facts of her own experience as evidence. In this case, the logic of the argument is anecdotal (meaning it's derived from a handful of personal experiences) rather than purely theoretical, but it goes to show that logos doesn't have to be dry and clinical just because it's concerned with proving something logically. Logos: Proof vs. Apparent ProofNot all speakers who use logos can be blindly trusted. As Aristotle specifies in his definition of the term, logos can be "proof, or apparent proof." A speaker may present facts, figures, and research data simply to show that he or she has "done their homework," in an effort to attain the degree of credibility that is often automatically attributed to scientific studies and evidence-driven arguments. Or a speaker might present facts in a way that is wholly or partially misrepresentative, using those facts (and, by extension, logos) to make a claim that feels credible while actually arguing something that is untrue. Yet another factor that can cause a speech or text to have the appearance of providing proof is the use of overlong words and technical language—but just because someone sounds smart doesn't mean their argument stands to reason. Even if the facts have been manipulated, any argument that relies on or even just claims to rely on "facts" to appeal to a listener's reason is still an example of logos. Put another way: logos is not about using facts correctly or accurately, it's about using facts in any way to influence an audience. Logos ExamplesExamples of Logos in LiteratureWhile Aristotle defined the term logos with public speaking in mind, there are many examples of logos in literature. Generally, logos appears in literature when characters argue or attempt to convince one another that something is true. The degree to which characters use logos-driven arguments can also provide important insight into their personalities and motives. Logos in Shakespeare's OthelloIn Othello, Iago plots to bring about the downfall of his captain, Othello. Iago engineers a series of events that makes it look like Othello’s wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. Suspicion of his wife’s infidelity tortures Othello, who only recently eloped with Desdemona against her father’s wishes. In this passage from Act 3, Scene 3, Iago manipulates Othello by means of logos. Iago "warns" Othello not to succumb to paranoia even as he fans the flames of that paranoia:
Iago here lectures Othello on the abstract dangers of jealousy, but then goes on to use reason and deduction to suggest that, because Desdemona deceived her beloved father by marrying Othello, she'd probably be willing to deceive Othello, too. Logos in Don DeLillo's White NoiseIn this passage from Part 2 of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise, Jack Gladney and his son Heinrich gaze through binoculars at an Airborne Toxic Event—or cloud of poison gas—that has just hit their town. Jack, in denial, tries to reassure his son that the cloud won’t blow in their direction and that there’s no cause for alarm. Heinrich disagrees:
Jack tries to reassure himself and his family that the situation isn’t serious. Heinrich tries to counter his father’s irrational, fear-driven response to the catastrophe with his "fistful of data": information he's learned in school from a science video on toxic waste, as well as reports about the disaster that he heard on the radio. He presents the facts so that his father can’t ignore them, thereby strengthening the logos of his argument that the situation is serious and the cloud will come their way. In this particular example, the lack of logos in Jack's argument reveals a lot about his character—even though Jack is a tenured college professor, strong emotions and fear for his own mortality often drive his behavior and speech. Logos in Harper Lee's To Kill a MockingbirdIn this example from To Kill a Mockingbird, lawyer Atticus Finch uses logos to argue on behalf of a black defendant, Tom Robinson, who stands accused of raping a white woman.
The logos in this case lies in Atticus' emphasis on the facts of the case, or rather, the fact that there are no facts in the case against Tom. He temporarily ignores questions of racial justice and emotional trauma so that the jury can look clearly at the body of evidence available to them. In short, he appeals to the jury's reason. Logos in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceIn Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator takes a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son Chris, and their two friends John and Sylvia. When Chris tells the group in Chapter 3 that his friend Tom White Bear believes in ghosts, the narrator tries to explain that scientific principles only exist in our heads, and therefore are actually modern man's equivalent of ghosts:
The narrator uses logos in his discourse on scientific concepts by presenting his audience with an example—gravity—and asking them to consider their own experience of gravity as empirical evidence in support of his argument. He urges his friends to come to a "rational, intelligent conclusion" about the concept of gravity, instead of relying on conventional wisdom and unexamined assumptions. Logos in Political SpeechesPoliticians frequently use logos, often by citing statistics or examples, to persuade their listeners of the success or failure of policies, politicians, and ideologies. Logos in Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union AddressIn this example, Obama cites historical precedent and economic data from past years to strengthen his argument that recent progress has been substantial and that the nation's economy is in good health:
Logos in Ronald Reagan's 1987 "Tear Down this Wall" SpeechIn this speech, Reagan intends for his comparison between the poverty of East Berlin—controlled by the Communists—and the prosperity of Democratic West Berlin to serve as hard evidence supporting the economic superiority of Western capitalism. The way he uses specific details about the physical landscape of West Berlin as proof of Western capitalist economic superiority is a form of logos:
Why Do Writers Use Logos?It's important to note that the three modes of persuasion often mutually reinforce one another. They don't have to be used in isolation from one other, and the same sentence may even include examples of all three. While logos is different from both ethos (an appeal to the audience based on the speaker's authority) and pathos (an appeal to the audience's emotions), the use of logos can serve as a strong complement to the use of ethos and/or pathos—and vice versa. For instance, if a politician lists the number of casualties in a war, or rattles off statistics relating to a national issue, these facts may well appeal to the audience's emotions as well as their intellect, thereby strengthening pathos as well as logos as elements in the speech. Consider this passage from Michelle Obama's 2015 speech at The Partnership for a Healthier America Summit, in which she updates listeners on the success of her Let's Move! project for improving children's nutrition:
While Obama includes statistics to persuade her audience that Let's Move! has been a success (logos), she's also using those facts and figures to stir up enthusiasm for her cause (pathos). Other Helpful Logos Resources
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