Rhetoric Ethos, Pathos and Logos Wounds Will Never Heal
In an article titled ‘Wounds will never heal’ published in The Sunday Mail, 18 March, p. 42, author Max argues that Australia should not have signed an agreement for regional co-operation and a closer relationship between the Australian and Japanese militaries (Venables 2007, p. 42).
As we move forward, we will be critically examining the article using through three kinds of proofs - Ethos, Pathos and Logos; defined in Aristotle’s rhetoric theory which will be explained in more details in the following paragraphs.
Ethos is a set of values held either by an individual or by a community, reflected in their language, social attitudes and behavior. There are two independent concepts within Ethos, Personality and Stance. Personality defines the character, virtue and corporate identity of a person, revealed in his speech or through writing. From that, we are also able to determine the credibility of that person which as the same time increased the confidence in the audience. The second concept is Stance, which defines a persuader’s viewpoint in the topic discussed. It is also dynamic as it matches according to the audience’s response (Cockcroft & Cockcroft 2005, p. 28).
Pathos is the actualization of emotion by the persuader, who needed to arouse in an audience’s emotion of appropriate intensity, clarity and sharpness of focus. One of the components in actualization is graphic vividness. It is a matter of representation and perception. Another concept used in the process is emotive abstraction, which involves strong positive and negative connotations such as liberty; justice and dishonor are frequently used. These words reflect common experience, values and aspirations which is an alternative way to influence the majority of the audience to agree on the stance (Cockcroft & Cockcroft 2005, p. 56).
Logos is the process of identifying the issues at the heart of the debate, the range of diverse arguments in the discourse which has to be logical; the structure of
As we move forward, we will be critically examining the article using through three kinds of proofs - Ethos, Pathos and Logos; defined in Aristotle’s rhetoric theory which will be explained in more details in the following paragraphs.
Ethos is a set of values held either by an individual or by a community, reflected in their language, social attitudes and behavior. There are two independent concepts within Ethos, Personality and Stance. Personality defines the character, virtue and corporate identity of a person, revealed in his speech or through writing. From that, we are also able to determine the credibility of that person which as the same time increased the confidence in the audience. The second concept is Stance, which defines a persuader’s viewpoint in the topic discussed. It is also dynamic as it matches according to the audience’s response (Cockcroft & Cockcroft 2005, p. 28).
Pathos is the actualization of emotion by the persuader, who needed to arouse in an audience’s emotion of appropriate intensity, clarity and sharpness of focus. One of the components in actualization is graphic vividness. It is a matter of representation and perception. Another concept used in the process is emotive abstraction, which involves strong positive and negative connotations such as liberty; justice and dishonor are frequently used. These words reflect common experience, values and aspirations which is an alternative way to influence the majority of the audience to agree on the stance (Cockcroft & Cockcroft 2005, p. 56).
Logos is the process of identifying the issues at the heart of the debate, the range of diverse arguments in the discourse which has to be logical; the structure of
References: Cockcroft, R & Cockcroft, S 2005, Persuading people – an introduction to rhetoric, 2nd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hampshire. ‘Pact with Japan must be welcomed’, Courier Mail, 15 March 2007, p. 36. Reinking, J A, Hart, A W & von der Osten, R. 1999, Strategies for successful writing: A rhetoric, research guide, reader, and handbook, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, pp 156-181. Venables, M 2007, ‘For some, wounds will never heal’, The Sunday Mail, 18 March, p. 42.