Rhetorical Means and Modes
Aristotle’s Means and Modes: Logos, Ethos, Pathos
A. MEANS = HOW (speaker moves the audience)
1. Logical Appeal (Logos): To REASON Clearly
2. Ethical Appeal (Ethos): To UNDERSTAND THE GOOD in its various forms. This is a value argument. Audience Determines Everything; if you can’t understand the values of your audience, you can’t move them.
3. Emotional Appeal (Pathos): To UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONS. Are you fluent – do you speak the right emotional language to appeal to your audience?
B. MODES = WHAT (speaker does to persuade)
1. Logical Appeal (Logos): PROOF (Rhetorical Mindset). APPARENT PROOF
(Data that either becomes or does not).
2. Ethical Appeal (Ethos): CHARACTER of the speaker –Credibility is everything.
3. Emotional Appeal (Pathos): To PLACE the audience in the right frame of mind. Get them to listen, keep them there, then move them to your side.
Great oratory has three components: style, substance, and impact.
Style: A great speech must be masterfully constructed. The best orators are masters of both the written and spoken word, and use words to create texts that are beautiful to both hear and read.
Substance: A speech may be flowery and charismatically presented, and yet lack any true substance at all. Great oratory must center on a worthy theme; it must appeal to and inspire the audience’s finest values and ideals.
Impact: Great oratory always seeks to persuade the audience of some fact or idea. The very best speeches change hearts and minds and seem as revelatory several decades or centuries removed as when they were first given.
Rhetorical Triangle 1.pdfRhetorical Triangle:
Point 1- Speaker: Disembodied words or an entire personal (Think first or third person P.O.V.). Tone is important here.
Purpose: What does the speaker seek to move? (always the audience to his/her side). Surface= what product are they trying to sell? Deeper= What message are they trying to sell?
Point 2- Audience: All the people the speaker seeks to change. Who? Why? Consider how the two connect.
Medium: What is the delivery system? Speech? Essay? Book? Visual? Audio?
Point 3- Subject (Message): How does the speaker “frame” the argument?
Tone: Author’s attitude, style, techniques. Any literary devices used?