Classical Appeals

11 Key excerpts on "Classical Appeals"

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  Reframing Rhetoric

  A Liberal Politics Without Dogma

  • G. Yoos(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  A good starting point to analyze the complexity of logical appeals in rhetoric is not just about getting things straight about logic. It is much more complicated than that. To say something is logical is for many just a way of saying your con- clusions are true. Unfortunately, being logical is not what makes things true. An analysis of logical appeals in rhetoric can be best clarified by interpretations of the Greek term logos foundational in classical Greek rhetoric (Yoos 1996). 182 • Reframing Rhetoric The fundamental sense of logos is word. Logical appeal is an appeal to words. It is an appeal to the consistency in our use and the meaning of words. It is ad hominem, that is, our appeals are to what people say they believe and not to what they should believe. If the meaning of what they say is “such and such,” then oth- ers are compelled to agree given the meaning of their words that they have said “such and such. They cannot deny their own meaning. Let’s call a logical appeal to words and their meaning an appeal to semantic consistency. To say “John is a bachelor, and therefore he is unmarried” is to say what is true of John on the basis of the use of the term “bachelor.” Bachelors are male is redundant. Arguments over semantic consistency are settled by semantic conventions of language usage. Disputes over semantic consistency are resolved by mutual accepted interpretations of the uses of words. Another way of characterizing the same point about an appeal to logos as word is that the conclusions of deductive arguments are contained in the data pre- sented in the premises. What you put into your premises in words is what you get out as a conclusion. What we get out of them is the content we put into them. Premises are like banks of information. You get out what information you put into them. In logic sentences expressed in the form of valid arguments are sometimes called analytic statements.

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  Analysing Political Speeches

  Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor

  • Jonathan Charteris-Black(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  1.5 Summary In spite of disparaging contemporary uses of the term ‘rhetoric’, the con-cept provides the basis for much of our current understanding of how persuasion operates in language. A classical framework for oratory still contributes to how speeches are classified in terms of three major types: deliberative, forensic and epideictic. These can be differentiated by analysis of the speech circumstances, taking into account the types of responses they evoke, their social setting and their orientation towards time. Following Aristotle, persuasive appeals can be made on the basis of the three artistic proofs of ethos, logos and pathos. These are, respectively, appeals grounded in the speaker’s morality, in his or her ability to form rational arguments, and in his or her ability to arouse the emotions of the audience. Arguments can be analysed in terms of their logical structure by identifying syllogisms comprised of a major premise, a minor premise and a conclusion, though to stimulate inference on the part of an audience the minor premise may be omitted. Where this occurs, it is known as an enthymeme. The arrangement of a speech may be analysed into a sequence of parts, commencing with a prologue, continuing with a narrative, then a proof fol-lowed by a refutation, and concluding with an epilogue. There are variations according to the branch of rhetoric, because, for example, a refutation is more likely in forensic oratory although this may not occur in an epideictic (i.e. ceremonial) speech. Speeches may be analysed by matching the artistic proofs with the parts of a speech, so, for example, appeals to emotion are likely to be especially effective in the epilogue, whereas the prologue needs to establish the speaker’s credibility by appealing to the audience’s ethos.

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  Persuasion in Public Discourse : Cognitive and functional perspectives (Volume 79)

  • Jana Pelclová, Wei-lun Lu(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • John Benjamins Publishing Company

    (Publisher)

  The large corpus of bibliography related to the tradition of research of historical, theoretical, and practical dimensions of rhetoric, includes two recent handbooks in which the latest advances in rhetorical scholarship can be found: The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (Lunsford, Wilson and Eberlz 2009) and Handbook of Argumentation Theory (van Eemeren et al. 2014). Chapter 2. Construction of the speaker’s persuasive image in public discourse 45 and (3) logos – strategies of argumentation (cf. Arist. Rh. 1355b35–1356a4). In the persuasive process, ethos, pathos, and logos represent three inextricably con-nected approaches to the persuasive language use in which the (rhetorical) situ-ation is linked together with the speaker and the audience as well as the subject. The dynamics of activation of these approaches in the given discourse (i.e. which approach is foregrounded as a persuasive strategy) and the nature of their linguistic and non-linguistic manifestation (e.g. patterns of word choices, explicit/implicit choices, etc.) depend on the wider sociocultural and situational context in which the discourse is anchored. In other words, whether the speaker, in their persuasive intention, predominantly uses strategies presenting their own character, focuses more on the elements of emotional appeal, or largely relies on means of argumen-tation depends on the nature of the audience, the concrete situation in which they are speaking, and the moral and social norms of a given society, all of which shape communication practices in a particular time and place. 2 This chapter focuses on various conceptualizations of ethos in classical rhetoric, attempting to reconstruct an extended model of rhetorical ethos with the objective of applying this model as a tool for analyzing the use of persuasive strategies in contemporary public discourse.

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  COMM

  • Deanna Sellnow, Kathleen Verderber, Rudolph Verderber, , Deanna Sellnow, Deanna Sellnow, Kathleen Verderber, Rudolph Verderber(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Thinkers like Aristotle and Plato used the word rhetoric to mean using any and all “available means of persuasion” (Solmsen, 1954). Persuasive speakers do so by developing solid arguments. An argument, in this context, is not syn- onymous with “quarrel” as we sometimes define it today. Rather, argument means articulating a position with the support of logos, ethos, and pathos (Perloff, 2010). Logos is a persuasive strategy of constructing logical arguments that support your position with evidence and reasoning. Ethos is a persuasive strategy of highlighting your competence, credibility, and good character as a means to convince oth- ers to support your position (Kennedy, 1999). And pathos is a persuasive strategy of appealing to emotions in order to convince others to support your position. Speakers must use caution when using pathos strategies, however, so as to avoid slipping from pathos to bathos, which is a term Alexander Pope coined in 1727 to refer to failed attempts at pathos that move from an appeal to emotions to overly sentimental language that sounds absurd or ridiculous. 17-1a Processing Persuasive Messages What determines how closely we listen to and how carefully we evaluate the hundreds of persuasive messages we hear each day? Richard Petty and John Cacioppo (1996) devel- oped the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to explain how we evaluate information before making our decisions. This dual processing model that we introduced in Chapter 2 suggests that we process persuasive messages in one of two ways. As illustrated in Figure 17.1, sometimes we use the “central route” and listen carefully, reflect thought- fully, and maybe even mentally elaborate on the message before making a decision. When we use the central route, we base our decision primarily on appeals to logic and rea- soning (logos).

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  The Stylistics of Poetry

  Context, cognition, discourse, history

  • Peter Verdonk(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  In addition, as Nash has aptly put it, during this process of swaying the audience ‘There comes a point . . . when the silent partners in the dialogue – the listeners, the readers – are no longer being told; they start to tell themselves, and in doing so help to shape the rhetoric that persuades them’ (1989: 197). 3 The proof derived from logical argumentation ( logos ), which is not about establishing the objective general truth as in hard science, but about finding arguments that rest on generally accepted principles and will therefore be acceptable to the audience (I.I.12). Incidentally, perhaps Aristotle’s motivation for his third proof suggests one of the reasons why rhetoric (and, by implication, style) has ever developed in the human mind. Most things in this world cannot be worded unequivocally, nor are they generally agreed on. Persuasion is then a last resort. This, by the way, fits in with modern discourse studies, which have challenged the idea that there is a direct correspondence between language and reality. Besides, this view of words and the world brings rhetoric and literature more closely together (Hesse 1992: 21–2). Returning to the three techniques of persuasion, it will be noticed that they are closely interrelated. Thus, the logos of a speech is only effective if it tunes in with the audience’s pathos , which, in turn, is to a large extent the outcome of the speaker’s ethos . In this interconnectedness, a specific use of language, that is, style, plays a crucial role: for example, rhetorical figures like schemes, that is, patterns of conspicuous regularity of form such as parallelism, rep-etition, antithesis, etc., which intensify meaning without actually changing it; and, tropes, that is, patterns involving a conspicuous change of the standard meaning, such as metaphor, metonymy, irony, etc.

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  The Persuasive Appeal of the Chronicler

  A Rhetorical Analysis

  • Rodney K. Duke(Author)
  • 1990(Publication Date)
  • Sheffield Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 LOGOS: THE RATIONAL MODE OF PERSUASION A. Introduction to Aristotle's Concept According to Aristotle the rhetor has three means or modes of effecting persuasion internal to the communication itself: the first, typically designated 'ethos', is the appeal to the character of the speaker; the second, 'pathos', is the appeal to the emo-tions of the audience; and the third, usually called 'logos', is the rational appeal through the speech itself as it demonstrates the argument. The term 'logos', as a designation of the third mode, comes from Aristotle's initial description of these modes. There he stated that the third mode takes place en autg tg logQ to dia tou deiknynai ephainesthai deiknynai, that is, 'in/by the speech/word itself through proving or appearing to prove'. 1 While 'logos' in this phrase does not mean literally the 'rational' or the logical', but rather 'word/speech', the mode of persuasion it designates is one which takes place on the rational level. This is because the act of rhetorical 'proving* or 'demonstrating' (for which Aristotle uses deiknynai and apodeiknynai) is analogous to the logical argumentation of dialectic. 2 1 Aristotle, I. 2. 1356a3-4. 2 This writer wishes to avoid giving the impression in the description of the modes of persuasion that reason (logos) is pitted against emoti on (pathos and ethos). One should observe that Aristotle did not see a dichotomy between reason and emotion. Rather, where he sets forth his systematic treatment of the modes of persuasion, it is evident that they work together to achieve their effect. Vernon Robbins ('Rhetorical Arguments in Galatians 5-6' [paper presented at Emory University, October 1985]), in a succinct definition of the three modes, has cap-tured the intricate relationship among them: 'Ethos is the credibility of the speaker as manifested in the speech; logos is the speech which

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  Analysing Religious Discourse

  • Stephen Pihlaja(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Rhetoric has also always been intimately linked to the accumulation and assertion of power and authority and its key concepts intersect and build on one another to make meaning both in the service of, and against the exercise of, political and social power. Rhetoric centres several relationships in its analyses, relationships organised towards persuasion, attempts to get others to align their actions and thoughts with one’ s own. Classically, rhetorical encounters are organised by a ‘triangle’ that includes a rhetor making an argument in a specific situation, all to persuade an audience. Arguments can be complex and made in formal contexts such as courts or in conversation as in Plato’ s dialogues. Rhetoric focuses on 91 how the persuasive appeal of logos (or ‘word’, ‘rationality’) or logical argu- ment central to an exchange, the premises, and the syllogistic constructs are used to make a case. Rhetoric can also be used to track the role of a rhetor’ s ethos (‘nature’, ‘disposition’) or credibility which is crucial to an argument’ s situational effectiveness. Rhetoric’ s final major mode of appeal is the concept of pathos (‘suffering’). Rhetoric highlights how an audience is persuaded not only by the logical structure of an argument, nor simply the credibility of the one making the argument, but also by emotional appeals that ‘move’ them to accept an argument. Emotional appeals are often cast negatively, denigrated as manipulative and subordinate to logic or a very clinical conception of ‘credibility’. But as feminist scholars especially have argued, even a purported ‘lack’ of emotion – the attempt to position emotional appeals as hyper-localised, perhaps frenzied and irrational compared to the calm, cool dispassionate rationality of logic (the former often associated with women and the latter with men) – is itself a rhetorical appeal (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1999).

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  Common Core Reading Lessons

  Pairing Literary and Nonfiction Texts to Promote Deeper Understanding

  • Stacey O'Reilly, Angie Stooksbury(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Rhetoric. Rhetoric? Simply defined, rhetoric is the way we use language to write or speak effectively. Convincing others and defending what we believe is an integral part of navigating daily life. Students must be taught to appreciate rhetoric and the many ways it can impact the outcome of getting what they want. Depending upon the age of the student and the previous exposure to rhetoric, you may find yourself beginning with the basic rhetorical question. Start by asking students some of the cliché questions that they may have heard and been too quick to answer. Some possibilities are “If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?” “How am I supposed to live without you?” “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” “What business is it of yours?” “Why me?” Students may laugh, but many will admit to getting into trouble for answering these questions or for “talking back.” Teaching students that some questions are not meant to be answered verbally introduces them to the idea that rhetoric forces them to play a game. Questions are used to promote thought and emphasize points. Part of the art of rhetoric is listening to what is being said and how it is being said in order to understand your next move.

  Rhetoric

  Rhetoric is the way we use language to write or speak effectively.

  Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

  We acknowledge the importance of rhetoric but can find ourselves, and our students, overwhelmed by the endless possibilities. To achieve a small, capable plan of attack we approach rhetoric through ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the credibility, character, and competence of the speaker. Pathos is the emotional appeal of the speaker. Logos is the facts, statistics, and logical appeals the speaker makes. Ethos, pathos, and logos are essential tools in reaching an audience when woven together in the right doses based upon the composition of the audience.

  Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

  • Ethos is the credibility, character, and competence of the speaker.
  • Pathos is the emotional appeal of the speaker.
  • Logos is the facts, statistics, and logical appeals the speaker makes.

  An Example of Breaking It Down

  Ethos

  Let's break it down. Students must consider where the information is coming from and adequately evaluate the source. There is no magic formula for calculating ethos here; a list of initials following a name does not always make a person credible. For example, a doctor of sociology speaking at a symposium to raise awareness on issues plaguing the homeless population in the United States will have studied, gathered research, and interpreted the data, perhaps even spent years detailing his conclusions in writing. Based upon our reflection of his credentials and life's work, we find him to be a credible resource. Another speaker at the symposium is a former homeless transient with a general equivalency diploma (GED) who spent more than 20 years living on the streets across the United States. At first glance, the audience might admire his ability to turn his life around while overlooking his credibility. But, if you think about it, he has lived the life that the researcher has only studied. His experience is no less valid than that of the doctor, and his brings an aspect that the doctor can’t provide. Students need to see that both of these men are essential to the program because combined they provide the scope and depth to truly understand the issue.

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  Rational Rhetoric

  The Role of Science in Popular Discourse

  • David J. Tietge(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  171 5 Scientific Ethos Professional rhetoricians have written widely on ethos. It, along with the two other main Aristotlean appeals, logos and pathos, have figured prominently in the tradition of rhetorical studies, but the scholarship has been especially prolific in the last ten years. Craig R. Smith, for ex-ample, has written on the issue of credibility using a hermeneutic read-ing of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric; Robert Wade Kennedy has examined the relationship between ethos, truth, and metaphor in his “Truth as Metaphor”; Barbara Warnick sees ethos as a central appeal in the criti-cal practice of rhetorical criticism; John Poulakos has speculated on the intersection between ethos and questions of beauty; Eric King Watts has explored the centrality of ethos for determining a racial aesthetic; R.D. Cherry has written on the impact of ethos on self-perception in “Ethos and Persona: Self-Representation in Written Discourse”; Martin Medhurst uses ethos as a primary sounding board for understanding the religious rhetoric of our contemporary democracy; Carole Blair and Neil Michael have discussed the role of ethos in American nation-al identity; and Carolyn Miller has attempted to tease apart human-computer interactions and the role of ethos in determining expertise and agency. And these are just contemporary rhetoricians discussing specific modern aspects of ethos. Jeanne Fahnstock has written widely on figures, tropes, and appeals as they relate to science specifically, as in her articles in Written Communication, “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts,” and “Preserving the Figure: Consistency in the Presentation of Scientific Arguments,” or her book Rhetorical Figures in Science.

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  Norms in Argumentation

  Proceedings of the Conference on Norms 1988

  • Robert Maier(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  A final issue concerning the role of appeal in political discourse con-cerns the nature of the legitimating norms to which the speaker appeals in positioning the audience and justifying his or her arguments. Such norms appear to fall into categories which are themselves describable (1) with reference to those performative speech acts associated with specific propositional or intentional attitudes: in particular, with the acts performed by uttering the verbs believe, desire, intend ; and (2) with reference to the class of verbs denoting the linguistic expression of prop-ositions, such as declare, state ; and (3) with the pragmatic conditions on the utterance of declarative verbs, particularly the conditions pertaining to the speaker's authorisation to speak. Various types of orienting norms may be expressed as: (1) Appeals to the Higher Good. These forms of rhetoric are oriented to the ethical beliefs of a particular community or group; they are exemp-lified by such sentences as We hold these truths to be self-evident, All right-thinking people agree that..., and so forth. (2) Appeals to the General Will. These forms of rhetoric are oriented to the desires (or aspirations) of a community or group; they are exempli-fied by such sentences as This government has a mandate to ..., What the people of this country want..., and so forth. (3) Appeals to the Founding Intent. These forms of rhetoric are oriented to the intentions of some community or its representatives. They place the speaker and the audience in relation to the values expressed by the parties to an original contract, which may itself (as in a constitution) be seen as a canonical text, or may rather be conceived as an act of covenant founding a national or other entity. They are exemplified by such sentences as Our party, in keeping with [the constitution, the traditional goals of our movement]..., and so forth.

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  Modern Rhetoric in Culture, Arts, and Media

  13 Essays

  • Joachim Knape, Alan L. Fortuna(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  This knowledge is related somewhat vaguely to the technical arts, as we find later in Sophist and Roman theoreticians. In his work on rheto- ric, Aristotle first identified and systematized the fundamental factors that, in his opinion, could be rhetorically relevant (in contexts of argument and persuasion). These factors are Logos, Ethos and Pathos. Naturally, logos, the text of a speech intended to be orally presented, was assigned particular importance. Within the logos, structures must be created, 53 Alcidamas: On Sophists. 54 Plato: Phaedrus, 274b–277a. 55 From text generation to performance, everything is to be viewed as a single concentrated and cohesive event. 56 This despite that fact that even in ancient Greece, there were famous speech writers (logographs) as secondary orators whose speeches were then given performed by primary orators. The Rhetorical Ethos in the Moment of Speech 63 that take heed of the cognitive and perceptive limits of the listener. The ‘ephemeral’ (non- persistent), the rapid linearity in the performative ‘time-flow’, and the logical sequence of argumentation found in orally performed speech texts 57 demand the calibration of the logos to the momentary and real perceptive possibilities of the listeners, even when the text has been prepared beforehand. For this reason it sometimes suffices when argumen- tation based on the rhetorical sister of the syllogism, the enthymeme (which has been created especially for the given setting and contains only probabilistic premises), is plau- sible in the concrete speech event. Aristotle naturally also envisioned situational tuning in the use of the other argumentative instruments, ethos and pathos. 58 Important for the concept of ethos, for starters, is that it is also considered a form of evidence in persuasive contexts. And like the others, it is also activated by the text of the speech itself, which means that it must be found within the logos.

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