The Rhetorical Appeals
In order to bring an audience to question their own controlling idea, revise it,
or even exchange it for another, the rhetor must appeal to the audience’s
capacities to trust, to reason, and to feel emotions. These are the rhetorical
appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. Used as adjectives, one would call them
ethical, logical, and pathetic (not pathological) appeals.
These three human capacities correspond to three aspects of any act of communication.
Any communication act has ethical, logical, and pathetic dimensions through and through,
although each appeal may be emphasized to different degrees, depending on the
audience’s controlling idea.
Ethos invites the audience to belong to the rhetor’s logos.
The logos leads the audience to undergo its corresponding pathos.
The Rhetorical Triangle
Appeals to ethos; ethical appeal;
customary character
“the habitual haunt of an animal”
Appeal to logos;
logical appeal;
“laying down the
premises”
Communication
“The Text”
Appeal to pathos;
pathetic appeal;
“Being laid
down upon”
Ethos
Ethos is the character of the rhetor, which I analyze into two aspects, the
knowable, familiar character, and the unknowable, unfamiliar character.
Whenever we encounter something familiar and recognizable, we are more likely to enter
into a conversation that ethos guides, either in a friendly, neutral, or antagonistic manner.
Either way, we trust that it is present, real, and worthy of attention; we have some notion
of where it is going, and our cherished opinions will likely remain safe. This is the
always and already customary pathways or grooves we carry out our everyday ways
of thinking and discoursing. We have little patience for what lies outside the familiar.
This is so because we cannot recognize the unfamiliar. Instead, we attempt to translate
the unfamiliar into familiar terms in order to remain safe and in control, but in the process,
we remain deaf to those qualities we lack the capacity to comprehend.
A rhetor who understands and honors this principle invites her audience
to entertain an unfamiliar discourse by beginning with what is familiar to the audience.
The rhetor asks herself,
“what about me and my controlling idea would my audience find agreement with?”
Ethos: Situated and Invented
In coming to know the character of her audience to determine what is
common between them, the rhetor distinguishes to what degree the audience
is familiar or unfamiliar with the character of the rhetor. If the rhetor already
has left tracks within a community, that audience will listen to the rhetor
from that background. That is situated ethos.
On the other hand, if the rhetor has no standing in the community at all, then she
will have to create an ethos the audience will find trustworthy.
This is invented ethos.
Obviously, all ethos is invented. Situated ethos is the product or accumulation of
prior instantiations of ethos in the past. Another term for this is reputation, and for
any rhetor to provide an effective invitation, it must be a good reputation. Thus, if one
lacks a reputation, one must establish one’s ethos. If one has a bad reputation, one must
re-establish one’s ethos.
Establishing and Re-establishing Ethos
An ethos sufficient to invite the audience to listen to the rhetor’s logos includes
three qualities or roots of one and the same ethos:
1) The rhetor must demonstrate that she has done the homework. The rhetor’s knowledge
concerning the subject must be grounded and demonstrated reliably. If the rhetor lacks
first hand empirical knowledge, then she must rely on other authorities with situated ethos
who do have such knowledge. If the audience is not familiar with the authority’s ethos, it is
up to the rhetor to familiarize the audience with such an ethos. Additionally, the rhetor must
reason and communicate clearly, making sensible connections,
and providing thoughtful proofs for every conclusion.
2) Doing the homework simultaneously demonstrates good will toward the audience.
Making it clear that the rhetor has the audience’s own best interest at heart garners respect
and deepens trust in what will follow in the rhetor’s logos, as she lays it out for the audience.
3) Both of these qualities also demonstrate that the rhetor is a good, intelligent person,
worthy of trust, even if the rhetor boldly takes the audience far outside their familiar domain.
Failing to establish an effective ethos will ultimately fail to invite an audience to go beyond
what they consider to be familiar and safe.
Varieties of Ethos
On page 14 of his article “Varieties of Ethical Argument,” the late Jim Corder
distinguished four varieties of ethos:
Dramatic ethos: “In this category are literary characters, who are clearly created by
their language, and the fictive creations that appear, for example, in ‘public service’
advertisements where advertisers create an image of concerned public virtue for themselves”
Gratifying ethos: Most ethical expressions in our culture are of this variety, including
“politicians, public leaders, television personalities and other entertainers, and various popular
figures.” Essentially, we have needs worthy to be filled and certain ethoi are perfectly
suited to pander to that need.
Functional ethos: “Some forms of discourse seem to create an ethos that, instead of providing
gratification, serves as a mark of recognition. Some brand names represent an ethos in this
sense, and some entertainers project such an ethos.”
Efficient ethos: A rare form of ethos, found in heroes and archetypal figures. This ethos fully
uses its own world and has no need for another. It is self-completing and non-renewing.
Generative ethos: This variety of ethos “is always in the process of making itself and of
liberating hearers to make themselves.” Here, “there is always more coming. It is never over,
never wholly fenced into the past. It is speaking out from history into history.”