Ashley Salinas BCOMM 3303-PO 1 MW 3:30-4:50 P.M. Professor Sviland Alternative Final Concept 1: Ethos: Description: Ethos, along with logos and pathos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Ethos is an argument that appeals to the audience by emphasizing the speaker's credibility and authority. If the speaker has a high-ranking position, is an expert in his or her field, or has had life experience relevant to a particular topic, anything the speaker says or does to ensure that the audience knows about and remembers these qualifications is an example of ethos. Ethos or the ethical appeal, means to convince an audience of the author’s credibility or character. An author would use ethos to show to his audience that he is a credible source and is worth listening to. Ethos is the Greek word for “character.” The word “ethic” is derived from ethos. Ethos can be developed by choosing language that is appropriate for the audience and topic (this also means choosing the proper level of vocabulary), making yourself sound fair or unbiased, introducing your expertise, accomplishments or pedigree, and by using correct grammar and syntax. Ethos is established through four characteristics: trustworthiness, similarity to audience, authority, and expertise (reputation). First, ethos equals trustworthiness is when an audience is more likely to be persuaded by someone that they trust. If the audience trusts me then they expect what I am telling them is true. My trustworthiness is enhanced if the audience believes I have a strong moral character, as measured by concepts such as honesty, ethical or moral, generous, or benevolent. Additionally, your audience tends to trust me if I am a member of a group with which these qualities are often associated (e.g. a pastor; a firefighter). Second, ethos equals similarity to the audience: my audience is more receptive to being persuaded by someone with whom they can identify. Like trustworthiness, this aspect of ethos is largely independent of the topic. If I share characteristics with my audience that great. If I don’t, I can adapt my language, my mannerisms, my dress, my visuals, and my overall style to match my audience. In other words, this is considered to be the chameleon effect. Characteristics which I might share with my audience are age, gender, race, culture, socio-economic status. Am I rich? poor? educated? middle-class? urban? rural? citizenship, where you are from, whether in a global sense (what country are you from?), or in a local sense (are you urban, or rural?), career or affiliation, do you share a profession with your audience? Are you a member of the same organization as your audience?, personality, analytical? emotional? reserved? outgoing? Third, Ethos equals authority—the greater a person’s authority, whether formal (e.g. an elected official) or moral (e.g. the Dalai Lama), the more likely an audience is inclined to listen and be persuaded. Authority comes from the relationship between the speaker and the audience and is, in most cases, fairly easy to recognize. Several types of authority include: organizational authority (e.g. CEO, manager, supervisor), political authority (e.g. president, political leader), religious authority (e.g. priest, pastor, nun), educational authority (e.g. principal, teacher, professor), and elder authority (e.g. anyone who is older than me). In addition to these, every speaker has authority just from being the speaker. When I speak, I am the one at the front of the room with a microphone or under the spotlight. I control the moment and thus, have temporary authority. Lastly, ethos equals reputation (or expertise). Ashley Salinas BCOMM 3303-PO 1 MW 3:30-4:50 P.M. Professor Sviland Expertise is what I know about my topic. Reputation is the fact that my audience knows the same thing I know about my topic. My ethos is influenced by my reputation. Of the four characteristics of ethos, reputation is the one most connected to the topic of my presentation. My reputation is determined by several related factors: my experience in the field, how many years have I worked with or studied this topic?, my proximity to the topic or concept, am I the one who invented the concept?, was I involved at all?, or am I more of a third-party?, my production in the field such as books or academic papers written, my achievements, or recognition from others in the field, awards won, testimonials earned, records achieved and milestones reached. Examples of ethos would include: A commercial about a specific brand of toothpaste says that 4 out of 5 dentists use it. A political candidate talks about his experiences as a soldier, as a businessman, and as a politician-in contrast to his opponent. At a meeting about new standards in education, the featured speaker is a college professor, who argues for the new standards. Expert witnesses in a trial are an example of ethos-the insinuation is that a psychiatrist's opinion about a person's state of mind should carry more weight with a jury, or that a forensic scientist should be able to interpret evidence better than the jury. A makeup commercial features beautiful, famous women, who use this makeup-appealing to the viewer because if these women use it, it must be a good product. Another example of ethos would be Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech given on June 12, 2005. “Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.” How it will help me: The concept of ethos will be useful to me in my future position because in order to be an effective communicator and writer I will have to use ethos. When I become a certified public accountant using ethos will allow my audience/coworkers to better understand why I give a presentation on this or that aspect of accounting. My audience will be listening attentively from my first words; they expect that I have something valuable to say, and are eager to hear it. They are likely to be persuaded by me, provided that my speech is compelling. My ethos as a speaker is primarily established before I speak my first words. Concept 2: Pathos: Description: Pathos, otherwise known as the emotional appeal, is a means to persuade an audience by appealing to their emotions. Authors use pathos to invoke sympathy from an audience; to make the audience feel what the author wants them to feel. A common use of pathos would be to draw pity from an audience. Another use of pathos would be to inspire anger from an audience, perhaps in order to prompt action. Ashley Salinas BCOMM 3303-PO 1 MW 3:30-4:50 P.M. Professor Sviland Pathos is the Greek word for both “suffering” and “experience.” The words empathy and pathetic are derived from pathos. Pathos can be developed by using meaningful language, emotional tone, emotion evoking examples, stories of emotional events, and implied meanings. Pathos--appeal to emotion is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response to an impassioned plea or a convincing story. Pathos can be found in literature, as well as, music. Literature will often make use of pathos to evoke certain feelings from the reader. Examples of pathos are included in literature. Shakespeare was certainly a master of pathos—If Romeo and Juliet does not evoke a feelings of tragedy, then what does? How else would you describe the act of suicide at the thought of a lover dying? The Adventures of Tom Sawyer uses pathos when we learn that the girl Tom loved treated him "like a dog like a very dog." His heart is so trampled, he wishes he could die "temporarily." Indeed, pathos leads us straight to the doldrums of Tom's heart. Of Mice and Men is another brilliant piece of literature that stirs up feelings based on sadness or tragedy. This is John Steinbeck's tale of two migrant workers who keep resettling across California as they search for job opportunities in the midst of The Great Depression. The expression “What a Kick in the Teeth” is also an example of pathos. There's a form of expression that can make me dance until my feet ache or cry my eyes out. Music has an ability to touch our lives through a careful correlation between lyrics and instrumentals. Popular examples of pathos in music include: Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" is a powerful composition which stirs up feelings of emotion or pride in the United States. It was particularly poignant during the span of time following the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2U” is a song about the sadness that comes from missing an ex. Adele's pretty good at working pathos, too. Her hit single "Someone Like You" also deals with feelings of sadness and despair. "Nevermind. I'll find someone like you. I wish nothing but the best for you," deals with one of the many stages of a breakup. How it will help me: Pathos will help me in my future position because humans are very emotional beings. Pathos has a very real existence in our day-to-day lives, be it rhetoric, music or literature. Emotions — whether fear or love, pity or anger — are powerful motivators for my audience. An audience emotionally stimulated in the right way is more likely to accept my claims and act on my requests. As an accountant by using pathos I will greatly improve my effectiveness as a speaker. Concept 3: Logos: Description: Logos or the appeal to logic, means to convince an audience by use of logic or reason. To use logos would be to cite facts and statistics, historical and literal analogies, and citing certain authorities on a subject. The word “logic” is derived from logos. Logos can be developed by using advanced, theoretical or abstract language, citing facts, using historical and literal analogies, and by constructing logical arguments. Logos deals with several aspects, which are concerned with the content, structure, and argumentation of a speech. It conceives language mainly on the content level, diminishing style and expressive qualities. Most important is the relationship of facts presented in the speech with reality. Thus, the questions of truthfulness and correspondence of reality are a part of logos. Facts, reality, and truthfulness are indecisive and relative terms. Logos is the appeal towards logical reason, thus the Ashley Salinas BCOMM 3303-PO 1 MW 3:30-4:50 P.M. Professor Sviland speaker wants to present an argument that appears to be sound to the audience. Examples of logos generally appear in works of literature when characters argue or attempt to convince one another that something is true. In 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 state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is." 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. Politicians frequently use logos, often by citing statistics or examples, to persuade their listeners of the success or failure of policies, politicians, and ideologies. In 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: Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance—food, clothing, automobiles—the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth...In the 1950s, Khrushchev [leader of the communist Soviet Union] predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor. How it will help me: As an accountant, logos will be useful because preconceptions are not easily pushed aside. If my presentation is hard to follow, or if my arguments are fairly weak, my audience will find it easy to dismiss my ideas. Sound, logical arguments, on the other hand, are hard for my audience to ignore. The use of logos can serve as a strong complement to the use of both ethos and/or pathos. By demonstrating logos with strong, logical arguments, my audience will tend to see me as knowledgeable and prepared.