Writing for Your Audience
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Logos, Ethos, Pathos
Logos
Logical structure of reasons and evidence in an argument; make argument internally consistent and logical; find best reasons, support them with best evidence
Ethos
Audience’s confidence in the writer’s credibility and trustworthiness; present self effectively; enhance credibility
Pathos
Audience’s sympathies---both real and imagined; make reader open to message; appeal to reader’s values and interests
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Creating Effective Ethos
Be knowledgeable about your issue
 Use examples, personal experience, statistics, empirical data, etc.
Be fair
 Fairness to alternative views
 Understand and emphasize with other points of view
Build a bridge to your audience
 Ground argument in shared values and assumptions
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Creating Effective Pathos
Use concrete language
 Specific details add interest
Use specific examples and illustrations
 Provide evidence; give presence and emotion
Use narratives
 Grabs attention and leads to claim
Choose words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Meatrix: Does it create effective
Ethos?
 Knowledgeable about issue
 Fair
 Bridge built to audience
Pathos?
 Concrete language
 Specific examples and illustration
 Narratives
 Words, metaphors, and analogies with appropriate connotations
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Accommodating Your Audience
1. One-sided versus multi-sided arguments
2. Understanding your audience
3. Treating different views a. Appealing to a supportive audience b. Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience c. Appealing to a resistant audience
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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One-sided versus Multisided
Arguments
 Types of arguments
 Onesided…
 Multisided…
 Research suggests when to use each
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Understanding Your Audience (1)
 Book suggests placing audience on scale strongly supportive
 May need to “invent” your audience strongly opposed
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Understanding Your Audience (2)
 Try to assess what audience knows
 Audience for term paper??
 Other examples of audiences for whom you may write???
 Determine level of background to give
 Too little leads to??
 Too much leads to??
 Determine level of formality
 Use of “I” or “we” or another actor
 Use of active or passive voice
 Understanding audience may take more time than researching topic!!
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Understanding Your Audience (3)
 Understanding audience is problem for professional rhetoricians (e.g., politicians, advertising executives, researchers)
 So people since the time of the Sophists have developed a variety of “tricks” to use for assessing and understanding the audience
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Understanding Your Audience (4)
 Most of the time, you know the audience because you’re part of the audience
 If you’re part of the audience, what will you know about them?
 Examples??
 If not part of audience, don’t consider individuals, but consider an abstraction of the audience —what they know, what they expect, how they will react
 Examples??
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Understanding Your Audience (5)
 Understand discourse conventions
 Flow of words for that interpretive community who somehow set the rules
 How can you find out about discourse conventions?
 What are some examples of interpretive communities and their discourse conventions ?
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Treating Different Views (1)
 Appealing to a supportive audience
 What approach should you use?
 What are some examples?
 Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience
 What approach should you use?
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Treating Different Views (2)
 Appealing to a supportive audience
 What approach should you use?
 What are some examples?
 Appealing to a neutral or undecided audience
 What approach should you use?
 Toulmin argument:
 claim
 reason (grounds to support reason)
 warrant (backing to support warrant)
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Treating Different Views (3)
 Rebutting evidence —how?
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Treating Different Views (4)
 Appealing to a resistant audience
 Delayed thesis
 Rogerian
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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Discussion in Groups of 5
Watch the Meatrix
1. What is the thesis of the Meatrix?
2. Does this argument create effective ethos? If so, how?
Be specific.
3. Does this argument create effective pathos? If so, how? Be specific.
4. What type of audience does it target? Explain?
5. Suppose the audience is resistant, give an outline of either a delayed-thesis or Rogerian argument for the same thesis
CS 4001 Mary Jean Harrold
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