Review of Rhetorical Appeals

• Rhetoric (n) - the art of speaking or writing effectively

(Webster's Definition).
• According to Aristotle, rhetoric is "the ability, in each particular case, to see
the available means of persuasion." He described four main forms of
rhetoric: Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Kairos.

• In order to be a more effective writer, you must understand these

terms. When you better understand their meanings, your writing
becomes more persuasive.
 Ethos: the source's credibility / authority
 Is the source trustworthy, educated, reliable,
credible, honest, fair, and respectable?
 Examples:
 Client testimonials
 Success stories
 Celebrity endorsements
 Personal anecdotes
• Product: George Foreman Grill
• Repertoire: boxing champion and a preacher

Why is George Foreman credible?

 Logos: the logic/reasoning used to support a claim;
the facts and statistics used to help support the
argument
 Examples:
 Case studies
 Cause and effect reasoning
 Facts and statistics
 Analogies
• Product: Cheerios
• Logic: “Lower your
cholesterol 4% in 6
weeks!”
 Pathos: appeals to the audience’s capacity for
empathy; wants you to care about the subject matter
 Typical Emotional Appeals:
 Love
 Pity
 Patriotism
 Hope
 Jealousy
 Anger
 Fear
• Product: Dorothy Gray
Salon
• Emotional Appeal:
jealousy / fear
 Kairos: establishes the timeliness of the issue;
appeals to the viewer’s or reader’s sense of urgency
(“it’s the right time to say or do the right thing”)
 Kairos Factors:
 Setting
 Time
 Place
• Speech: “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Historical Context and Importance: Together, the “where”
(the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.), the
“why” (the culmination of a march on Washington by
thousands of members of the civil rights movement), and the
“when” (during the centennial celebration of the
Emancipation Proclamation, at a time of day when broadcast
networks could carry the speech live, and during a march
which had drawn more than 250,000 people to the capital)
created the perfect moment for King’s message to reach the
largest number of receptive listeners.
What appeals are being used in the ad above?
 What appeals are
being used in the ad?
Is there one that is a
stronger approach
than the others?
 Elements of an Argument
• The hook is an opening that grabs the reader’s
attention and establishes a connection between
the reader and the writer.
• The claim is a clear and straightforward
statement of the writer’s belief and what is being
argued.
• Concessions and refutations are restatements of
arguments made by the other side (concessions)
and the writer’s arguments against those
opposing viewpoints (refutations) and why the
writer’s arguments are more valid.
• Support is the reasoning behind the argument.
Support can include evidence as well as logical
and emotional appeals (logos and pathos). It may
also anticipate objections and provide reasoning
to overcome those objections.
• Summary/Call to action, which is a closing
statement with a final plea for action.
Rhetorical Appeals
• Pathos, or emotional appeals, attempt to
persuade the reader or listener by appealing
to the senses and emotions.
• Ethos are ethical appeals that attempt to
persuade the reader or listener by focusing
on the qualifications or the character of the
speaker or by claiming that “it” is the ethical
“thing” to do.
• Logos, or logical appeals, attempt to
persuade readers or listeners by leading
them down the road of logic and causing
them to come to their own conclusions.
Logical appeals state the facts and show how
the facts are interrelated.
• Kairos is the attempt to convince the
audience that the issue is so important that
they must act now.
• Repetition: using the same words frequently to emphasize a message
or point

• Parallelism: is repetition of the same pattern of words/phrases and

grammatical structure within a sentence or passage to show that two
or more ideas have the same level of importance; may create a sense
of rhythm and momentum
• **All parallelism is repetition, but not all repetition is
parallelism!**

• Analogy: a comparison in which the subject is compared point by

point to something far different, usually with the idea of clarifying
the subject by comparing it to something familiar