Ethos

7 Key excerpts on "Ethos"

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  Rational Rhetoric

  The Role of Science in Popular Discourse

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

    (Publisher)

  We understand Scientific Ethos 173 how ideas interconnect through rhetorical study, and we applaud a disciplinary anti-essentialism that ultimately gives us keener insight into how we relate to one another rhetorically. Gideon Burton defines rhetoric beyond its classical role as a study of the varied means of per-suasion to include the very important issue of meaning: “Indeed, a basic premise for rhetoric is the indivisibility of means from mean-ing; how one says something conveys meaning as much as what one says. Rhetoric studies the effectiveness of language comprehensively, including its emotional impact (pathos), as much as its propositional content (logos).” What Burton leaves out, however, is the even more significant at-tribute of Ethos , which is traditionally defined as “character” but is perhaps more accurately described as the cumulative effect of a speak-er’s (or writer’s or communicator’s) personality, dress, manner, status, authority, and presumed or explicit level of expertise. The classical, Ar-istotlean reading of “Ethos,” taken from Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, has al-most always involved the original sense of “character,” particularly that of a moral sort, though Aristotle himself, as translator George Kennedy clarifies, used the term “Ethos” “to refer to qualities, such as an innate sense of justice or a quickness of temper, with which individuals may be naturally endowed and which dispose them to certain kinds of ac-tion” (163). “Ethos,” in this sense, retains the inherent qualities of per-sonality that a speaker (for Aristotle, rhetoric almost always indicated formal speech, as opposed to writing or general communication) may possess (whether moral or not), but it seems also to point to a speak-er’s propensity for taking decisive action.

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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)

  With a distinction between “agonistic” and “consensual” representations of the role of the speaker, a contextual dimension for investigating persuasion strategies opens, thus enabling an insight into particular sociocultural aspects of the speaker’s use of ethotic strategies that belong to the realm of moral and social norms of a certain society. Bearing in mind different ancient conceptions of rhetorical Ethos and a differ-ence between Greek and Roman sociocultural specifics of character presentation, the reconstruction of a model for analysis can be proposed. This reconstruction is based on a definition of rhetorical Ethos in which its classical rhetorical and linguis-tic pragmatic features are combined: rhetorical Ethos is a strategy of presentation of a speaker’s character; characteristics and persuasive function of Ethos are anchored in the context of moral and social norms of a certain society and are activated in language use. The reason for including a linguistic pragmatic perspective into a defi-nition of rhetorical Ethos is to provide a framework for a more thorough analysis of the character presentation in the given discourse. This perspective enables a better comprehension of rhetorical Ethos on the level of the specific linguistic strategies used, as it provides the toolkit for the analysis of contextual aspect of their use. The model for analysis of rhetorical Ethos is partially based on Verschueren’s linguistic pragmatic approach (cf. Verschueren 2012) and proposes an investigation of several interrelated tasks that include specific linguistic strategies based on classical rhetor-ical notions as well as features of contextual properties of character presentation: 1. Investigation of the wider social, political, cultural, and historical context from the aspect of the speaker’s social role. – What social relations and values in the given rhetorical discourse shape the speaker’s use of rhetorical Ethos as a persuasive strategy? 8 7.

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  Rhetorical Public Speaking

  Social Influence in the Digital Age

  • Nathan Crick(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7 Ethos DOI: 10.4324/9781003316787-7 Perhaps what most distinguishes public speaking from any other form of persuasion is the fact that its effectiveness relies so heavily on the character of the speaker. A public speaker steps before the members of an audience and effectively asks them a favor, to listen attentively as the speaker rewards their time and energy with a speech that is tailored specifically to their interests. Even in digital social influencing, a speaker must engage an audience immediately and demonstrate that most treasured commodity—that of authenticity—to keep them from moving on to more interesting material. When we decide to be a member of an audience, whether virtually or in person, we do so because we want to listen to the speaker, and we have done so because we have put trust in that speaker to reward our time commitment. Any successful public speech must therefore begin with the existence of mutual trust that forms a temporary relationship between speaker and audience. Without a sense of this “bond,” a speaker’s words are just more data. For the purposes of rhetorical public speech, Ethos represents this sense of public character that is recognized by an audience and influences their reception of the speaker’s arguments. Ethos is the capacity to influence an audience based on the audience’s perceptions of the credibility and character of the speaker in relationship to the audience’s own interests and values. Ethos in the rhetorical sense is therefore not something absolute, stable, and private that one carries around wherever one goes; it is determined by the relationship one has with an audience through action and performance. To understand the possible effects of one’s rhetoric, then, a person must understand how an audience perceives his or her character. For the Greeks, people with Ethos were those people who earned respect, admiration, and allegiance through both word and deed

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  Expel the Pretender

  Rhetoric Renounced and the Politics of Style

  • Eve Wiederhold(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  Indeed, part of what makes theorizing persuasive power so com-plex is that it must address what audiences should do with the idea that Ethos describes an artistic assemblage of words and images drawn from contexts that influence how a speaker’s persona will be read. The rhe-torical response is to advise the rhetor to trust audiences to understand that invention and fabrication are intrinsic to rhetorical communication. But here is a place to pause to consider the ways in which we are trained to embrace certain acts of composing as being “of good char-acter” as they endeavor to predispose us to be amenable to persuasion’s influence. As discussed in the previous chapter, when evaluating how the interplay between emotion and persuasion affects and effects judg- The Politic of Ethos 151 ments of how a rhetor uses language, there is a tendency to minimize the significance of cultural training on our conceptions of emotions as well as how they are represented. Lynn Worsham’s concept of “pedagogies of emotion” remains pertinent in this regard because it does not treat emotion as a site of an authentic experience but as a term that signifies a “tight braid of affect and judgment that is socially and historically con-structed and bodily lived, through which the symbolic takes hold of and binds the individual in complex and contradictory ways, to the social order and its structure of meanings” (Postal 216). Emotions represent not true experiences but troubled sites of identification that can become part of a disciplinary apparatus that educates citizens in how to regard those words that seem able to represent virtuous personal qualities and linguistic modes of comportment. The rhetorical word for this training is paideia , the enculturated narratives we internalize that direct our regard for common language practices and shape expectations of how rhetors should participate with representational power.

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  Writing Spaces

  Readings on Writing Volume 3

  • Dana Driscoll, Matthew Vetter, Dana Driscoll, Matthew Vetter(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  Ethos often gets defined as good character, cred-ibility, and believability—concepts you may have encountered in a high school writing or literature class. And while these words and the scenar-ios above offer a pretty good start at defining Ethos, figuring out how to achieve these qualities in a written text can be challenging, particularly when you’re negotiating college writing expectations. This essay offers you a more robust definition of Ethos, as well as specific strategies for con-structing Ethos as a part of your writing process. More specifically, I’ll in-troduce you to a definition of Ethos that focuses on how the relationships you make with readers in different writing circumstances matter. I define Ethos as the strategic positioning of the rhetor in relationship to the audience and/or community . I use “strategic positioning” to indicate the way you’re making deliberate decisions or taking specific stances in relation to others. I use the words “audience” and “community” to invite you to consider the different relationships you might cultivate with readers. You might imag-ine yourself writing to an audience when writing a research proposal you want approved or you might feel like you’re writing up to readers who know more than you about your subject, but you’re always writing within the context of a community, whether it’s your actual classmates or an in-voked community of writers or perhaps people with a shared interest in an issue or topic. I invite you to use this definition to help you make decisions to best help readers adopt or entertain your purpose more readily. At the outset, I also want to make two additional points clear, and I turn to Jimmie Killingsworth’s scholarship in rhetoric to help me. He Kathleen J. Ryan 130 WRITING SPACES 3 writes, “The author’s position is not simply a personal account of himself or herself.

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  Writing the Visual

  A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication

  • Carol David, Anne R. Richards(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Parlor Press, LLC

    (Publisher)

  Ethos on the Web 147 ments of appeal on websites aimed at local or global audiences and to speculate on the rhetorical success of hypertextual design. When initi-ating discussion on rhetorical strategies online or cultural implications of website design, for example, or simply when using websites as points of reference for analysis of the visual projection of Ethos on the Web, teachers can also make practical use of the chapter by resorting to the key distinctions between rhetorical conventions that are discussed in this chapter. A sample assignment rounds out the chapter. I will begin by discussing a theoretical framework for Ethos and its place in visual arts and design. Ethos: Western, Eastern Although defining Ethos as a rhetorical strategy involves the role of per-sonal character, traditional Western rhetoric lacks a consensus regard-ing how to define that role. Two versions of Ethos dominate in the his-tory of Western rhetorical theory: one, the Platonic, recognizes Ethos as an individual quality of the rhetor and independent of rhetorical manipulations; the other, artistic, treats Ethos as something that can be created and manipulated through means of good sense, good will, and good use of language, as proposed by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. Obviously, the two versions are in conflict. Strictly speaking, Plato himself never uses the word Ethos, and his anti-rhetoric stance may well give the impression that he is also anti-Ethos. His emphasis on “true rhetoric” and the truthfulness of human character presented through that rhetoric suggests, however, that he is just as concerned about identifying the self in speech/writing as his sophist rivals are. Thus, “by inference,” writes Baumlin, one might still devise “a Platonic definition” of Ethos (xiii). But Platonic, or tran-scendent, truth has to be brought into play.

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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)

  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. In the enumeration of the three forms of evidence, Ethos is found at the very beginning of Aristotle’s rhetorical work, and thus is given hierarchical prominence, “now the proofs (písteis) furnished by the speech (lógos) are of three kinds. The first depends upon the moral character of the speaker (ēthos), the second upon putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind [referring to páthos], the third upon the speech itself (lógos), in so far as it proves or seems to prove.” 59 Despite the primary position of Ethos in the book, later references to this topic in Aristotle’s second book are quite brief. For this reason, they are invit- ing subjects of further development and thought in modern times, in particular because they provide important fundamental insights that are easily incorpo- rated into the modern theories of impression-management and image. In his 1970 work on ‘The Old Rhetoric’, French semiologist Roland Barthes summa- rized these considerations thus, Ethè are the attributes of the orator (and not those of the public, pathè): these are the character traits which the orator must show the public (his sincerity is of little account) in order to make a good impression: these are his “airs,” his qualities, his expressions. Hence there is no question here of an expressive psychology; it is a psychology of the imaginary (in the psychoanalytic sense: of the imaginary as an image-repertoire): I must signify what I want to be for the other .

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