Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle came up with three different categories to describe how people use rhetoric to persuade people: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Each of these terms describes a different way to try to reach an audience and convince them to agree with you. 

"Agree about what?" you ask. Well, whatever you want your audience to think, say, feel, or do. Do you want someone to agree with you on politics? Support your argument with rhetoric. Do you want your parents to give you extra privileges? Support your reasoning with rhetoric. Just be sure to use rhetoric wisely; just like the Force (in Star Wars), rhetoric can be used for good or for evil.

Most arguments use a combination of the different types of rhetoric in order to be convincing. Usually the three types of rhetoric are depicted as existing in a sort of triangle because in a good argument, there should be a balance of all three of these parts. When there isn't a good balance, that's when rhetoric can be used for "evil," as we will see when we discuss rhetorical fallacies.

Following is a summary of each of the three kinds of persuasion. If you want more information, here are some examples.

Ethos means the credibility of the person making the argument—or in other words, persuading with a person's good reputation or trustworthiness. (Hint for remembering the term: "Ethos" is like "ethical," and if someone is ethical, then they have good morals and we trust them.) If someone has good ethos, it means that we respect them and we will be more willing to believe what they say. 

    In many arguments, the best kind of ethos comes from an expert. For example, if you wanted to get advice about what medicine to take for a bad cold, you would probably trust a doctor more than your next-door neighbor. Why? Because the doctor has better ethos. You respect a doctor's medical opinion more than some random neighbor's.

    In advertisements, we usually see ethos through celebrity endorsements. This happens when a famous celebrity (oftentimes an actor or athlete) appears in the commercial to use a product or tell the audience that the product is good (like in this Pepsi commercial with the group One Direction and football player Drew Bees). Many celebrities probably know nothing about the products they are endorsing (they usually get paid to do it), but because people admire these celebrities, the celebrities' ethos is effective in getting people to buy the products. Obviously, not all ethos is created equal, so if you use ethos, you need to make sure you choose someone who is really a trustworthy expert on your subject.

Pathos is an appeal to our emotions—or in other words, persuading with emotion. It can be any type of emotion, like happiness, fear, anger, sadness, guilt, anxiety, etc. (Hint for remembering the term: "Pathos" is like "pathetic," and when we see something pathetic, we have an emotional response to it.) When an argument has pathos, we identify with the person who is making the argument.

    The way we choose to word an argument can greatly affect its emotional impact, and the short film about the homeless man shows this perfectly. Changing the words made people identify with the old man and have an emotional response—in this case, pity.

    Many, many, many advertisements rely a great deal on pathos to affect people, especially through the use of humor. Humorous advertisements give us positive emotions that can cause us to have positive feelings about the product that the advertiser wants us to buy. But be careful! If you only use pathos, you might be guilty of giving misleading information to people. Some advertisers use only pathos in advertisements and avoid having to try to convince us with logic (logos) or trustworthy endorsements (ethos). 

Logos is an appeal to our abilities to use logic and reasoning—or in other words, persuading with logic. Arguments with logos use solid evidence to convince readers. This evidence often comes in the form of facts or statistics, since it is usually pretty hard to argue against numbers. (Hint for remembering the term: "Logos" means "logic" because they come from the same root word.) If an argument uses logos, then we can see the good reasons behind the argument and we are more likely to agree with it.

    Logos is a key part of any good argument, but far too often, some people forget to use it. However, if you just argue with logos, then your audience still might not believe you. In order to be fully convinced, they also need to feel a personal connection to you and the topic (through pathos) and they need to feel that they can trust you to give them correct information (through ethos). You need all three parts of rhetoric to make a good argument.

    Unfortunately, many advertisements fail to use logos as part of their convincing us to buy a product. Consider this famous commercial for Old Spice body wash, for example. Are there any facts or statistics about the product in any part of the commercial? Not really. This commercial and many other commercials try to make us feel good about a product without using logos (mostly using pathos instead) in order to get us to buy something without receiving a lot of logical reasons to do so.

To review the concepts of ethos, pathos, and logos—