pathos critique essay

Pathos Definition

What is pathos? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Pathos , along with logos and ethos , is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is an argument that appeals to an audience's emotions. When a speaker tells a personal story, presents an audience with a powerful visual image, or appeals to an audience's sense of duty or purpose in order to influence listeners' emotions in favor of adopting the speaker's point of view, he or she is using pathos .

Some additional key details about pathos:

• You may also hear the word "pathos" used to mean "a quality that invokes sadness or pity," as in the statement, "The actor's performance was full of pathos." However, this guide focuses specifically on the rhetorical technique of pathos used in literature and public speaking to persuade readers and listeners through an appeal to emotion.
• The three "modes of persuasion"— pathos , logos , and ethos —were originally defined by Aristotle.
• In contrast to pathos, which appeals to the listener's emotions, logos appeals to the audience's sense of reason, while ethos appeals to the audience based on the speaker's authority.
• Although Aristotle developed the concept of pathos in the context of oratory and speechmaking, authors, poets, and advertisers also use pathos frequently.

Pathos Pronunciation

Here's how to pronounce pathos : pay -thos

Pathos in Depth

Aristotle (the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist) first defined pathos , along with logos and ethos , in his treatise on rhetoric, Ars Rhetorica. Together, he referred to pathos , logos , and ethos as the three modes of persuasion, or sometimes simply as "the appeals." Aristotle defined pathos as "putting the audience in a certain frame of mind," and argued that to achieve this task a speaker must truly know and understand his or her audience. For instance, in Ars Rhetorica, Aristotle describes the information a speaker needs to rile up a feeling of anger in his or her audience:

Take, for instance, the emotion of anger: here we must discover (1) what the state of mind of angry people is, (2) who the people are with whom they usually get angry, and (3) on what grounds they get angry with them. It is not enough to know one or even two of these points; unless we know all three, we shall be unable to arouse anger in any one.

Here, Aristotle articulates that it's not enough to know the dominant emotions that move one's listeners: you also need to have a deeper understanding of the listeners' values, and how these values motivate their emotional responses to specific individuals and behaviors.

Pathos vs Logos and Ethos

Pathos is often criticized as being the least substantial or legitimate of the three persuasive modest. Arguments using logos appeal to listeners' sense of reason through the presentation of facts and a well-structured argument. Meanwhile, arguments using ethos generally try to achieve credibility by relying on the speaker's credentials and reputation. Therefore, both logos and ethos may seem more concrete—in the sense of being more evidence-based—than pathos, which "merely" appeals to listeners' emotions. But people often forget that facts, statistics, credentials, and personal history can be easily manipulated or fabricated in order to win the confidence of an audience, while people at the same time underestimate the power and importance of being able to expertly direct the emotional current of an audience to win their allegiance or sympathy.

Pathos Examples

Pathos in literature.

Characters in literature often use pathos to convince one another, or themselves, of a certain viewpoint. It's important to remember that pathos , perhaps more than the other modes of persuasion, relies not only on the content of what is said, but also on the tone and expressiveness of the delivery . For that reason, depictions of characters using pathos can be dramatic and revealing of character.

Pathos in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

In this example from Chapter 16 of Pride and Prejudice , George Wickham describes the history of his relationship with Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet—or at least, he describes his version of their shared history. Wickham's goal is to endear himself to Elizabeth, turn her against Mr. Darcy, and cover up the truth. (Wickham actually squanders his inheritance from Mr. Darcy's father and, out of laziness, turns down Darcy Senior's offer help him obtain a "living" as a clergyman.)

"The church ought to have been my profession...had it pleased [Mr. Darcy]... Yes—the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation of the best living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively attached to me. I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to provide for me amply, and thought he had done it; but when the living fell it was given elsewhere...There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me no hope from law. A man of honor could not have doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it—or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudence, in short any thing or nothing. Certain it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done anything to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and I may perhaps have sometimes spoken my opinion of him, and to him, too freely. I can recall nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very different sort of men, and that he hates me." "This is quite shocking!—he deserves to be publicly disgraced." "Some time or other he will be—but it shall not be by me. Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose him." Elizabeth honored him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than ever as he expressed them.

Here, Wickham claims that Darcy robbed him of his intended profession out of greed, and that he, Wickham, is too virtuous to reveal Mr. Darcy's "true" nature with respect to this issue. By doing so, Wickham successfully uses pathos in the form of a personal story, inspiring Elizabeth to feel sympathy, admiration, and romantic interest towards him. In this example, Wickham's use of pathos indicates a shifty, manipulative character and lack of substance.

Pathos in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter , Hawthorne tells the story of Hester Prynne, a young woman living in seventeenth-century Boston. As punishment for committing the sin of adultery, she is sentenced to public humiliation on the scaffold, and forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her clothing for the rest of her life. Even though Hester's punishment exposes her before the community, she refuses to reveal the identity of the man she slept with. In the following passage from Chapter 3, two reverends—first, Arthur Dimmesdale and then John Wilson—urge her to reveal the name of her partner:

"What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him—who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself—the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!’ The young pastor’s voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor baby at Hester’s bosom was affected by the same influence, for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur... "Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven’s mercy!’ cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. ‘That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast."

The reverends call upon Hester's love for the father of her child—the same love they are condemning—to convince her to reveal his identity. Their attempts to move her by appealing to her sense of duty, compassion and morality are examples of pathos. Once again, this example of pathos reveals a lack of moral fiber in the reverends who are attempting to manipulate Hester by appealing to her emotions, particularly since (spoiler alert!) Reverend Dimmesdale is in fact the father.

Pathos in Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

In " Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," Thomas urges his dying father to cling to life and his love of it. The poem is a villanelle , a specific form of verse that originated as a ballad or "country song" and is known for its repetition. Thomas' selection of the repetitive villanelle form contributes to the pathos of his insistent message to his father—his appeal to his father's inner strength:

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It's worth noting that, in this poem, pathos is not in any way connected to a lack of morals or inner strength. Quite the opposite, the appeal to emotion is connected to a profound love—the poet's own love for his father.

Pathos in Political Speeches

Politicians understand the power of emotion, and successful politicians are adept at harnessing people's emotions to curry favor for themselves, as well as their policies and ideologies.

Pathos in Barack Obama's 2013 Address to the Nation on Syria

In August 2013, the Syrian government, led by Bashar al-Assad, used chemical weapons against Syrians who opposed his regime, causing several countries—including the United States—to consider military intervention in the conflict. Obama's tragic descriptions of civilians who died as a result of the attack are an example of pathos : they provoke an emotional response and help him mobilize American sentiment in favor of U.S. intervention.

Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country...The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.

Pathos in Ronald Reagan's 1987 " Tear Down This Wall!" Speech

In 1987, the Berlin Wall divided Communist East Berlin from Democratic West Berlin. The Wall was a symbol of the divide between the communist Soviet Union, or Eastern Bloc, and the Western Bloc which included the United States, NATO and its allies. The wall also split Berlin in two, obstructing one of Berlin's most famous landmarks: the Brandenburg Gate.

Reagan's speech, delivered to a crowd in front of the Brandenburg Gate, contains many examples of pathos:

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe...Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly...Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar... General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Reagan moves his listeners to feel outrage at the Wall's existence by calling it a "scar." He assures Germans that the world is invested in the city's problems by telling the crowd that "Every man is a Berliner." Finally, he excites and invigorates the listener by boldly daring Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union, to "tear down this wall!"

Pathos in Advertising

Few appreciate the complexity of pathos better than advertisers. Consider all the ads you've seen in the past week. Whether you're thinking of billboards, magazine ads, or TV commercials, its almost a guarantee that the ones you remember contained very little specific information about the product, and were instead designed to create an emotional association with the brand. Advertisers spend incredible amounts of money trying to understand exactly what Aristotle describes as the building blocks of pathos: the emotional "who, what, and why" of their target audience. Take a look at this advertisement for the watch company, Rolex, featuring David Beckham:

Notice that the ad doesn't convey anything specific about the watch itself to make someone think it's a high quality or useful product. Instead, the ad caters to Rolex's target audience of successful male professionals by causing them to associate the Rolex brand with soccer player David Beckham, a celebrity who embodies the values of the advertisement's target audience: physical fitness and attractiveness, style, charisma, and good hair.

Why Do Writers Use Pathos?

The philosopher and psychologist William James once said, “The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.” Pathos is a powerful tool, enabling speakers to galvanize their listeners into action, or persuade them to support a desired cause. Speechwriters, politicians, and advertisers use pathos for precisely this reason: to influence their audience to a desired belief or action.

The use of pathos in literature is often different than in public speeches, since it's less common for authors to try to directly influence their readers in the way politicians might try to influence their audiences. Rather, authors often employ pathos by having a character make use of it in their own speech. In doing so, the author may be giving the reader some insight into a character's values, motives, or their perception of another character.

Consider the above example from The Scarlet Letter. The clergymen in Hester's town punish her by publicly humiliating her in front of the community and holding her up as an example of sin for conceiving a child outside of marriage. The reverends make an effort to get Hester to tell them the name of her child's father by making a dramatic appeal to a sense of shame that Hester plainly does not feel over her sin. As a result, this use of pathos only serves to expose the the manipulative intent of the reverends, offering readers some insight into their moral character as well as that of Puritan society at large. Ultimately, it's a good example of an ineffective use of pathos , since what the reverends lack is the key to eliciting the response they want: a strong grasp of what their listener values.

Other Helpful Pathos Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Pathos: A detailed explanation which covers Aristotle's original ideas on pathos and discusses how the term's meaning has changed over time.
• The Dictionary Definition of Pathos: A definition and etymology of the term, which comes from the Greek pàthos, meaning "suffering or sensation."
• An excellent video from TED-Ed about the three modes of persuasion.
• A pathos -laden recording of Dylan Thomas reading his poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

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Definition of Pathos

No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend’s Or of thine own were: Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls ; It tolls for thee.

By describing how all men are connected rather than isolated, Donne utilizes pathos as an emotional appeal to readers of his poem. The feelings evoked by the poet are grief and sympathy for all who die, because all death is an individual loss and a loss for mankind as a whole.

Common Examples of Emotions Evoked by Pathos

Examples of pathos in advertisement, famous examples of pathos in movie lines.

Many films feature dialogue that generates pathos and emotional reactions in viewers. Here are some famous examples of pathos in well-known movie lines:

Difference Between Pathos, Logos, and Ethos

Aristotle outlined three forms of rhetoric, which is the art of effective speaking and writing. These forms are pathos, logos , and ethos . As a matter of rhetorical persuasion, it is important for these forms (or “appeals”) to be balanced. This is especially true for pathos in that overuse of emotional appeal can lead to a flawed argument without the balance of logic or credibility.

Effect of Pathos on Logos

Effect of pathos on ethos.

Although ethos is itself a strong rhetorical device and works wonders when it comes to persuasion and convincing the audience, when a touch of pathos is added to it, it becomes a lethal weapon. It has happened in I Have a Dream , a powerful rhetorical piece of Martin Luther King and the speech is still a memorable rhetorical piece. The reason is that not only does it enhance the power of argument when added with an ethos, it also increases the trust and credibility of the speaker or orator.

How To Build Arguments Using Pathos  

Fallacy of emotion (pathos) / fallacious pathos, three characteristics of pathos,  using pathos in sentences, examples of pathos in literature, example 1:  funeral blues by w.h. auden.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now ; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Example 2:  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

Example 3:  Romeo and Juliet  by William Shakespeare

Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene From ancient grudge break to new mutiny Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star- cross ’d lovers take their life Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

Synonyms of Pathos

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• How to write a rhetorical analysis | Key concepts & examples

How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis | Key Concepts & Examples

Published on August 28, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A rhetorical analysis is a type of essay  that looks at a text in terms of rhetoric. This means it is less concerned with what the author is saying than with how they say it: their goals, techniques, and appeals to the audience.

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Table of contents

Key concepts in rhetoric, analyzing the text, introducing your rhetorical analysis, the body: doing the analysis, concluding a rhetorical analysis, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about rhetorical analysis.

Rhetoric, the art of effective speaking and writing, is a subject that trains you to look at texts, arguments and speeches in terms of how they are designed to persuade the audience. This section introduces a few of the key concepts of this field.

Appeals: Logos, ethos, pathos

Appeals are how the author convinces their audience. Three central appeals are discussed in rhetoric, established by the philosopher Aristotle and sometimes called the rhetorical triangle: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos , or the logical appeal, refers to the use of reasoned argument to persuade. This is the dominant approach in academic writing , where arguments are built up using reasoning and evidence.

Ethos , or the ethical appeal, involves the author presenting themselves as an authority on their subject. For example, someone making a moral argument might highlight their own morally admirable behavior; someone speaking about a technical subject might present themselves as an expert by mentioning their qualifications.

Pathos , or the pathetic appeal, evokes the audience’s emotions. This might involve speaking in a passionate way, employing vivid imagery, or trying to provoke anger, sympathy, or any other emotional response in the audience.

These three appeals are all treated as integral parts of rhetoric, and a given author may combine all three of them to convince their audience.

Text and context

In rhetoric, a text is not necessarily a piece of writing (though it may be this). A text is whatever piece of communication you are analyzing. This could be, for example, a speech, an advertisement, or a satirical image.

In these cases, your analysis would focus on more than just language—you might look at visual or sonic elements of the text too.

The context is everything surrounding the text: Who is the author (or speaker, designer, etc.)? Who is their (intended or actual) audience? When and where was the text produced, and for what purpose?

Looking at the context can help to inform your rhetorical analysis. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech has universal power, but the context of the civil rights movement is an important part of understanding why.

Claims, supports, and warrants

A piece of rhetoric is always making some sort of argument, whether it’s a very clearly defined and logical one (e.g. in a philosophy essay) or one that the reader has to infer (e.g. in a satirical article). These arguments are built up with claims, supports, and warrants.

A claim is the fact or idea the author wants to convince the reader of. An argument might center on a single claim, or be built up out of many. Claims are usually explicitly stated, but they may also just be implied in some kinds of text.

The author uses supports to back up each claim they make. These might range from hard evidence to emotional appeals—anything that is used to convince the reader to accept a claim.

The warrant is the logic or assumption that connects a support with a claim. Outside of quite formal argumentation, the warrant is often unstated—the author assumes their audience will understand the connection without it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still explore the implicit warrant in these cases.

For example, look at the following statement:

We can see a claim and a support here, but the warrant is implicit. Here, the warrant is the assumption that more likeable candidates would have inspired greater turnout. We might be more or less convinced by the argument depending on whether we think this is a fair assumption.

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Rhetorical analysis isn’t a matter of choosing concepts in advance and applying them to a text. Instead, it starts with looking at the text in detail and asking the appropriate questions about how it works:

• What is the author’s purpose?
• Do they focus closely on their key claims, or do they discuss various topics?
• What tone do they take—angry or sympathetic? Personal or authoritative? Formal or informal?
• Who seems to be the intended audience? Is this audience likely to be successfully reached and convinced?
• What kinds of evidence are presented?

By asking these questions, you’ll discover the various rhetorical devices the text uses. Don’t feel that you have to cram in every rhetorical term you know—focus on those that are most important to the text.

The following sections show how to write the different parts of a rhetorical analysis.

Like all essays, a rhetorical analysis begins with an introduction . The introduction tells readers what text you’ll be discussing, provides relevant background information, and presents your thesis statement .

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how an introduction works.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of oratory in American history. Delivered in 1963 to thousands of civil rights activists outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech has come to symbolize the spirit of the civil rights movement and even to function as a major part of the American national myth. This rhetorical analysis argues that King’s assumption of the prophetic voice, amplified by the historic size of his audience, creates a powerful sense of ethos that has retained its inspirational power over the years.

The body of your rhetorical analysis is where you’ll tackle the text directly. It’s often divided into three paragraphs, although it may be more in a longer essay.

Each paragraph should focus on a different element of the text, and they should all contribute to your overall argument for your thesis statement.

Hover over the example to explore how a typical body paragraph is constructed.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

The conclusion of a rhetorical analysis wraps up the essay by restating the main argument and showing how it has been developed by your analysis. It may also try to link the text, and your analysis of it, with broader concerns.

Explore the example below to get a sense of the conclusion.

It is clear from this analysis that the effectiveness of King’s rhetoric stems less from the pathetic appeal of his utopian “dream” than it does from the ethos he carefully constructs to give force to his statements. By framing contemporary upheavals as part of a prophecy whose fulfillment will result in the better future he imagines, King ensures not only the effectiveness of his words in the moment but their continuing resonance today. Even if we have not yet achieved King’s dream, we cannot deny the role his words played in setting us on the path toward it.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain the effect a piece of writing or oratory has on its audience, how successful it is, and the devices and appeals it uses to achieve its goals.

Unlike a standard argumentative essay , it’s less about taking a position on the arguments presented, and more about exploring how they are constructed.

The term “text” in a rhetorical analysis essay refers to whatever object you’re analyzing. It’s frequently a piece of writing or a speech, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you could also treat an advertisement or political cartoon as a text.

Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments . Ethos appeals to the speaker’s status or authority, making the audience more likely to trust them. Pathos appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic, for example.

Collectively, these three appeals are sometimes called the rhetorical triangle . They are central to rhetorical analysis , though a piece of rhetoric might not necessarily use all of them.

In rhetorical analysis , a claim is something the author wants the audience to believe. A support is the evidence or appeal they use to convince the reader to believe the claim. A warrant is the (often implicit) assumption that links the support with the claim.

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How to Use Pathos in an Essay: Connecting Emotion and Persuasion

Table of contents, the power of pathos, techniques for utilizing pathos, balance and ethical considerations.

• Aristotle. (n.d.). Rhetoric. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16357
• Edlund, J. R. (2019). The Ethos-Pathos-Logos of Aristotle's Rhetoric. Humanities Commons. https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:24300/
• Perloff, M. (2009). The dynamics of persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st century. Routledge.
• Johnson, R. H. (2005). Imagining the audience in audience appeals: Audience invoked in American public address textbooks, 1830-1930. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 8(3), 429-453.
• Walton, D. N. (2013). The new dialectic: Conversational contexts of argument. University of Toronto Press.
• Kellner, D. (2009). Critical theory, Marxism, and modernity. In The Routledge companion to social and political philosophy (pp. 381-395). Routledge.
• Gardner, R. C. (2019). Environmental psychology: An introduction. Routledge.
• Pinker, S. (2014). The sense of style: The thinking person's guide to writing in the 21st century. Penguin Books.
• Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Influence: Science and practice (Vol. 4). Pearson Education.
• Sobieraj, S., & Berry, J. M. (2011). From incivility to outrage: Political discourse in blogs, talk radio, and cable news. Political Communication, 28(1), 19-41.

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Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, using pathos in persuasive writing.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

Incorporating appeals to pathos into persuasive writing increases a writer’s chances of achieving his or her purpose. Read “ Pathos ” to define and understand pathos and methods for appealing to it. The following brief article discusses examples of these appeals in persuasive writing.

An important key to incorporating pathos into your persuasive writing effectively is appealing to your audience’s commonly held emotions. To do this, one must be able to identify common emotions, as well as understand what situations typically evoke such emotions. The blog post “ The 10 Most Common Feelings Worldwide, We Feel Fine ,” offers an interview with Seth Kamvar, co-author of We Feel Fine. According to the post, the 10 most commonly held emotions in 2006-2009 were: better, bad, good, guilty, sorry, sick, well, comfortable, great, and happy (qtd. in Whelan).

Let’s take a look at some potential essay topics, what emotions they might evoke, and what methods can be used to appeal to those emotions.

Example: Animal Cruelty

Related Emotions:

Method Narrative

In “To Kill a Chicken,” Nicholas Kristof describes footage taken by an undercover investigator for Mercy with Animals at a North Carolina poultry slaughterhouse: “some chickens aren’t completely knocked out by the electric current and can be seen struggling frantically. Others avoid the circular saw somehow. A backup worker is supposed to cut the throat of those missed by the saw, but any that get by him are scalded alive, the investigator said” (Kristof).

This narrative account, which creates a cruel picture in readers’ minds, will evoke anger, horror, sadness, and sympathy.

Example: Human Trafficking

• Sadness (sorry)
• Sympathy 

Method: Direct Quote

“From Victim to Impassioned Voice” provides the perspective of Asia Graves, a victim of a vicious child prostitution ring who attributes her survival to a group of women: “If I didn’t have those strong women, I’d be nowhere” (McKin).

A quote from a victim of human trafficking humanizes the topic, eliciting sadness and sympathy for the victim(s).

Example: Cyberbullying

Method: empathy for an opposing view.

The concerns of some people who oppose the criminalization of cyberbullying are understandable. For example, Justin W. Patchin, coauthor of Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying , opposes making cyberbullying a crime because he views the federal and state governments’ role as one to educate local school districts and provide resources for them (“Cyberbullying”). Patchin does not oppose cyberbullying itself; rather, he takes issue with the government responding to it through criminalization.

Identifying and articulating the opposing view as well as the concerns that underpin it helps the audience experience a full range of sympathy, a commonly held emotion, as a consequence of sincerely investigating and acknowledging another view.

The method a writer uses to persuade emotionally his or her audience will depend on the situation. However, any writer who uses at least one approach will be more persuasive than a writer who ignores opportunities to entreat one of the most powerful aspects of the human experience—emotions.

Works Cited

“Cyberbullying.” Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection . Detroit: Gale, 2015. Opposing Viewpoints in Context . Web. 21 July 2016.

Kristof, Nicholas. “To Kill a Chicken.” The New York Times . The New York Times, 3 May 2015. Web. 20 July 2016.

McKin, Jenifer. “From victim to impassioned voice: Women exploited as a teen fights sexual trafficking of children.” The Boston Globe . Boston Globe Media Partners, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 20 July 2016.

Whelan, Christine. “The 10 Most Common Feelings Worldwide: We Feel Fine.” The Huffington Post . The Huffington Post, 18 March 2012. Web. 21 July 2016.

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5.2: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos

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• Tanya Long Bennett
• University of North Georgia via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

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In order to persuade a particular audience of a particular point, a writer makes decisions about how best to convince the reader. Aristotle recognized three basic appeals that a writer (or orator) should consider when presenting an argument: logos, ethos, and pathos .

Consider this hypothetical plea from Zach to his father: “Dad, could you loan me money for gas until I get my paycheck at the end of the week? If you do, I’ll be able to haul your junk pile to the dump as well as drive myself back and forth to work. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get my check!”

Logos , a Latin term referring to logic, appeals to the reader’s intellect. As readers, we test arguments for their soundness. Does the writer make false assumptions? Are there gaps in the argument? Does the writer leap to conclusions without sufficient evidence to back up his claims? As writers, it is our job to build a solid, well-explained, sufficiently supported argument. In academic texts, logos is usually considered the most important appeal since scholarly research is supposed to be objective and thus more dependent on logic than on emotion (pathos) or on the reputation of the scholar (ethos). What about Zach’s argument above? Essentially, he asserts that a loan from his father would benefit both Zach and his dad. Does the argument seem sound? We do not know why Zach is short on cash this week—his father may be aware that Zach spent most of last week’s check on the newest iPhone, so he does not have enough to cover his gas this week. Thus, there may be factors that undermine Zach’s implication that his request is motivated by responsibility. However, he does offer evidence that the loan will allow him to fulfill his obligations.

Logic is based on either inductive or deductive reasoning. Understanding these types of logic can help us test the soundness of arguments, both our own and those of others.

Inductive Reasoning

You likely use inductive reasoning every day. By this kind of logic, we form conclusions based on samples. Lab experiments, for example, must be repeatable in order for scientists to gather a convincing amount of data to prove a hypothesis. If a scientist hypothesizes that addiction to a particular drug causes a certain, predictable behavior, the experiment must be carefully controlled, and must be repeated hundreds of times in order to prove that the behavior is consistently associated with the addiction and that other possible causes of that behavior have been ruled out. If we observe enough examples of an event occurring under similar circumstances, we can employ inductive reasoning to draw a conclusion about the pattern. For example, if we pay less each time we buy apples at Supermart than when we purchase apples at Pete’s Grocery, we will likely conclude, inductively, that apples are less expensive at Supermart.

Literary argument is often based on inductive reasoning. Here are two illustrations of such reasoning:

• In Robert Frost’s sonnet “Design,” the color white is used ironically to suggest that only a devious designer would clothe the universe’s evil in so much beauty. The “dimpled spider, fat and white”; the “white heal-all” flower that “hold[s] up” the moth for the spider’s feast; and the rhyming of “blight” with “white” and “right” work together to generate the poem’s disturbing sense that the innocence implied in the whiteness of the natural scene is deceptive.

As powerful evidence of the irreversible destruction of war, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises presents Jake Barnes’s struggles to overcome the damage incurred during his service as a soldier in World War I. Jake’s difficulty coping with his injury, his tendency to self-medicate with alcohol, his inability to pray, and his failure to sustain an intimate relationship with another person all exemplify the terrible destruction inflicted on him by the war.

When writing a literary analysis essay, such as the paper that might develop from the second argument above, you will need to provide enough examples to support your assertion that the pattern you observed in the text does, indeed, exist.

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is drawing a conclusion based on a logical equation . It can be argued that we see deduction in its purest form in the context of scientific or mathematical reasoning. A logical equation of this sort is based on a proven assumption and/or clearly and inflexibly-defined terms. Commonly manifesting these conditions, computer programs accomplish tasks through deductive logic. For example, Mary, an art major who has completed 24 credit hours, cannot register for English 4500 . This statement is true because the university course enrollment system is governed by the following logic: Only English majors with 30 or more credit hours may register for English 4500. Students who have not officially declared as English majors and/or whose records do not exhibit completion of credit hours equal to or greater than 30 will be automatically prevented from registering for English 4500. Similarly, the following statement is based on deductive logic: Glyptol paint cannot be cleaned up with water only. This conclusion is based on the fact that Glyptol contains alkyds, which are not water soluble. Therefore, clean-up of any paint containing alkyds will require turpentine or another petroleum-based solvent.

Having examined deductive reasoning in its pure form, however, we can see that argument will rarely be required in such a context. Investigation may be required in order to determine the characteristic and/ or definition of a material, but once the facts are ascertained, scientists will not need to debate whether or not alkyds are water-soluble. Persuasion becomes relevant when the issue moves beyond proven facts. As we explore issues of ethics and values, logical reasoning can seem a bit mushy, yet rather than throw up their hands in abandonment of deductive reasoning, humanities scholars generally work hard to establish valid assumptions, or generally agreed-upon notions, that can be used to help humans move closer to reasonable, or logical, social and political beliefs and behaviors.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is famous for employing deductive reasoning to solve mysteries. In “Five Orange Pips,” Holmes uses deductive reasoning to work as far as possible toward solving John Openshaw’s case, based on the facts Holmes and Watson have been given:

Now let us consider the situation and see what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters which were received by himself and his successors. Did you remark the postmarks of those letters?

Equations such as the ones being forwarded by Holmes, when seen in their complete form, comprise a three part logical statement called a syllogism .

The statement includes

• A general statement , or major premise : Middle-aged men do not readily embrace change.
• A minor premise : Colonel Openshaw is a middle-aged man.
• And a conclusion : Colonel Openshaw would not have changed his circumstances without a strong impetus.

Although some might argue that Holmes came to the major premise through inductive reasoning (observing the behavior of many, many middle-aged men), in the above passage, he asserts the major premise as the basis for his deductive logical equation proving that Colonel Openshaw must have had a strong impetus for leaving America. If we agree with Holmes’s premise , we are likely to trust his conclusion .

Here is a more questionable logical equation, considered by the characters of Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat”:

If I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she should be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all this trouble. The whole affair is absurd.... But, no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work.

The following syllogism reflects the men’s attitude:

• Major premise: The world is just and reasonable.
• Minor premise: All of the men in the life-boat are good men and are working hard to survive.
• Conclusion: All of the men should survive.

You can see in the latter example that some times syllogisms are flawed, or illogical. Most of us doubt, at least some of the time, that the universe is indeed just and reasonable, at least by human standards. If it is not just, then the men’s conclusion that they ought to survive may be incorrect.

The occurrence of flawed logic is most problematic when we find an equation in its incomplete form: an enthymeme . If we consider the major premise as the underlying assumption, and recognize that this premise often goes unstated, we see that the enthymeme is a type of elliptical statement that sometimes “leaps” to its conclusion unreasonably. Consider the following examples:

Example \(\PageIndex{1}\)

• Enthymeme: Sarah, don’t eat that beef; it came from Bob’s Café.
• Major premise: All food from Bob’s Café is bad.
• Minor premise: That beef came from Bob’s Café.
• Conclusion: That beef is bad.

Example \(\PageIndex{2}\)

• Enthymeme: Lisa Harmon would be a good hire for our company; she has a degree from Harvard University.
• Major premise: Anyone with a degree from Harvard University would be a good employee for our company.
• Minor premise: Lisa has a degree from Harvard University.
• Conclusion: Lisa would be a good employee for our company.

Example \(\PageIndex{3}\)

• Enthymeme: Kill Bill is a chick flick.
• Major premise: Any movie that features a female protagonist is a chick flick.
• Minor premise: Kill Bill features a female protagonist.
• Conclusion: Kill Bill is a chick flick.

​​​​​​As you test the major premises above, how do they fare? Are they true? If a writer asserted the above enthymemes, would you, as the reader, agree with the major premise of each? Why or why not? What is the danger of reading (or hearing) only the enthymeme and not testing the underlying (unspoken) assumption which would complete the syllogism?

Logical Fallacies

Whether an assertion is based on inductive or deductive reasoning, when we test a claim, it helps to know about the following logical fallacies commonly found in weak arguments:

Bandwagon Argument

This claim encourages us to agree with a particular opinion because “everyone else agrees with it.” Frost’s “Design” implies an evil creator; several important critics agree that this is Frost’s message . Does the text itself support this theory?

Single Cause

This kind of argument suggests that a problem results from one particular cause when the causes may actually be complex and multiple: In The Great Gatsby, it is Gatsby’s decision to pursue a decadent woman like Daisy that leads to his downfall. Are there any other factors that might lay the groundwork for the tragic events of the novel?

This type of statement implies that there are only two options: Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz” either points to abuse, or it emphasizes the love between father and son. Is it possible for both to be true?

Slippery Slope

In this kind of argument, the writer warns that one step in the “wrong” direction will result in complete destruction: If the instructor curves the grade for this assignment, students will expect a curve on all assignments, and they will lose their motivation to work hard toward their own learning. Is the compromised course grade inevitable as the result of one curved assignment grade? A similar argument is the following: If the government gives welfare to poor citizens, those citizens will become permanently dependent on “handouts” and will lose their motivation to work for a living.

In this approach, the writer holds up an extreme and usually easyto-defeat example of the opposition as the general representative of that opposition instead of considering the opposition’s most reasonable arguments. Senator Jill Campbell was convicted of bribery, confirming that politicians can’t be trusted . Are there any ethical politicians? If so, this conclusion is logically flawed.

False Cause

Here, the writer offers a cause that seems linked to the problem but does not actually establish the causal relationship. T he university cut three class days due to snow, and now I’m failing history; therefore, the university should have added three extra days to the semester.

As you listen to and read arguments forwarded by others, test the claims carefully to ensure that you are not accepting an illogical line of thinking. Also, carefully review your own arguments to avoid forwarding faulty logic yourself!

Ethos, an appeal based on the credibility of the author, can affect a reader’s willingness to trust the writer. This credibility is often generated by the author’s apparent ethics. If the reader perceives that she shares important values with the writer, the door of communication opens wider than if the writer and reader seem to lack common values. Reflecting back to Zach’s request for a loan from his father, Zach does remind his father subtly that the loan will allow him to work, both at his job and at home. This respect for work is likely a value held by Zach’s father, so it becomes important common ground for the argument.

Consider again the previously presented thesis about Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises :

Hopefully, the writer, let’s call him Bill, will go on to support, with evidence from the text, the claim that the portrayal of Jake’s struggles promotes anti-war sentiment. Beyond the logical soundness of the argument, however, the reader will inevitably react on a personal level to the values underlying the statement. Bill, in his decision to focus on this aspect of the text, seems to appreciate the anti-war stance he observes in the novel. If the reader is sympathetic to this position, she may be more open to Bill’s argument as a whole.

Aside from the writer’s ethics, ethos can also be generated by the author’s credibility, which is usually based on (1) the ability to forward a logical argument (hence, ethos can be affected by logos!), (2) thoroughness of significant research, and (3) credentials proving the writer’s expertise. If Bill is not an expert in the field of literary studies yet, but is a sophomore English Major, he may have no recognizable credentials to persuade the reader in his favor. But if he has been careful and thorough in his presentation of evidence (passages and examples from the text itself) and has considered (and possibly integrated) material from scholarly articles and books to help define and support his argument, his ethos is likely to be strong.

What about pathos , or the appeal to the reader’s emotions? Certainly, Zach’s father will be affected by his feelings for his son Zach as he considers whether to loan Zach the money for gas, but what about in a more academic or professional context? Even though the goal of an academic writer is to approach a research topic as objectively as possible, even scholars are people, and people are emotional creatures. Bill’s awareness of this fact leads him to choose some particularly poignant passages from Hemingway’s novel to support his point:

The damage caused by Jake’s war experience is not only physical but also psychological. For example, after looking in the mirror at the scar from his wound, he lies in bed unable to sleep:

I lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn’t keep away from it, and I started to think about Brett and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Brett and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by and way down the street, and then I went to sleep. (Hemingway 31)

Although Jake makes a convincing show in public of dealing with his trauma, this passage reveals the challenge he faces in trying to cope.

Although Bill’s readers will critically consider whether this passage logically supports Bill’s claim, it is likely that they will also react emotionally to Jake’s anguish, thus reinforcing the persuasive effectiveness of Bill’s argument.

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Using rhetorical appeals to credibility, logic, and emotions to increase your persuasiveness

Lara varpio.

Department of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD USA

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

Scientific research is, for many, the epitome of objectivity and rationality. But, as Burke reminds us, conveying the meaning of our research to others involves persuasion. In other words, when I write a research manuscript, I must construct an argument to persuade the reader to accept my rationality .

While asserting that scientific findings must be persuasively conveyed may seem contradictory, it is simply a consequence of how we conduct research. Scientific research is a social activity centred on answering challenging questions. When these questions are answered, the solutions we propose are just that—propositions. Our solutions are accepted by the community until another, better proposition offers a more compelling explanation. In other words, everything we know is accepted for now but not forever .

This means that when we write up our research findings, we need to be persuasive. We must convince readers to accept our findings and the conclusions we draw from them. That acceptance may require dethroning widely held perspectives. It may require having the reader adopt new ways of thinking about a phenomenon. It may require convincing the audience that other, highly respected researchers are wrong. Regardless of the argument I want the reader to accept, I have to persuade the reader to agree with me .

Therefore, being a successful researcher requires developing the skills of persuasion—the skills of a rhetorician. Fortunately for the readers of Perspectives on Medical Education, The Writer’s Craft series offers a treasure trove of rhetorical tools that health professions education researchers can mine.

A primary lesson of rhetoric was developed by Aristotle. He studied rhetoric analytically, investigating all the means of persuasion available in a given situation. He identified three appeals at play in all acts of persuasion: ethos, logos and pathos. The first is focused on the author, the second on the argument, the third on the reader. Together, they support effective persuasion, and so can be harnessed by researchers to powerfully convey the meaning of their research.

Ethos is the appeal focused on the writer. It refers to the character of the writer, including her credibility and trustworthiness. The reader must be convinced that the author is an authority and merits attention. In scientific research, the author must establish her credibility as a rigorous and expert researcher. Much of an author’s ethos, then, lies in using well-reasoned and justified research methodologies and methods. But, a writer’s credibility can be bolstered using a number of rhetorical techniques including similitude and deference .

Similitude appeals to similarities between the author and the reader to create a sense of mutual identification. Using pronouns like we and us, the writer reinforces commonality with the reader and so encourages a sense of cohesion and community. To illustrate, consider the following:

While burnout continues to plague our residents , medical educators have yet to identify the root causes of this problem. We owe it to our residents to delve into this area of inquiry to secure their wellbeing over their lifetime of clinical service.

While burnout continues to plague residents , medical educators have yet to identify the root causes of this problem. Medical educators owe it to their residents to delve into this area of inquiry to secure their wellbeing over their lifetime of clinical service.

In the first sentence, the author aligns herself with the community of medical educators involved in residency education. The writer is part of the we who has to support residents. She makes the burnout problem something she and the reader are both called upon to address. In the second sentence, the author separates herself from this community of educators. She creates social distance between herself and the reader, and thus places the burden of resolving the problem more squarely on the shoulders of the reader than herself.

Both phrasings are equally correct, grammatically. One creates social connection, the other social distance.

Deference is a way for the author to signal respect for others, and personal humility. The writer can demonstrate deference by using phrases such as in my opinion , or through the use of adjectives (e.g., Smith rigorously studied) or adverbs (e.g., the important work by Jones). For example:

The thoughtful research conducted by Jane Doe et al. suggests that resident burnout is more prevalent among those learners who were shamed by attending physicians. Echoing the calls of others [ 1 ], we contend that this work should be extended to also consider the role of fellow learners as potential contributors to resident experiences of burnout.

In this sentence, the author does not present Jane Doe and colleagues as weak researchers, nor as developing findings that should be rejected. Instead, it shows deference to these researchers by acknowledging the quality of their research and a willingness to build on the foundation provided by their findings. (Note how the author also builds ethos via similitude with other scholars by calling the reader’s attention to the fact that other researchers have also called for more research on the author’s suggested extension of Doe’s work).

Readers pick up on the respect authors pay to other researchers. Being rude or unkind in our writing rarely achieves anything except reflecting poorly on the writer.

In sum, as my grandmother used to say: ‘You’ll slide farther on honey than gravel.’ Establishing similitude and showing deference helps to establish your ethos as an author. They help the writer make honey, not gravel.

Logos is the rhetorical appeal that focuses on the argument being presented by the author. It is an appeal to rationality, referring to the clarity and logical integrity of the argument. Logos is, therefore, primarily rooted in the reasoning that holds different elements of the manuscript’s argument together. Do the findings logically connect to support the conclusion being drawn? Are there errors in the author’s reasoning (i.e., logical fallacies) that undermine the logic presented in the manuscript? Logical fallacies will undercut the persuasive power of a manuscript. Authors are well advised to spend time mapping out the premises of their arguments and how they logically lead to the conclusions being drawn, avoiding common errors in reasoning (see Purdue’s on-line writing lab [ 2 ] for 12 of the most common logical fallacies that plague authors, complete with definitions and examples).

However, logos is not merely contained in the logic of the argument itself. Logos is only achieved if the reader is able to follow the author’s logic. To support the reader’s ability to process the logical argument presented in the manuscript, authors can use signposting. Signposting is often accomplished via words (e.g., first, next, specifically, alternatively, also, consequently, etc.) and phrases (e.g., as a result, and yet, for example, in conclusion, etc.) that help the reader to follow the line of reasoning as it moves through the manuscript. Signposts indicate to the reader the structure of the argument to come, where they are in the argument at the moment, and/or what they can expect to come next. Consider the following sentence from one of my own manuscripts. This is the last sentence in the Introduction [ 3 ]:

This study addresses these gaps by investigating the following questions: How often are residents taught informally by physicians and nurses in clinical settings? What competencies are informally taught to residents by physicians and nurses? What teaching techniques are used by physicians and nurses to deliver informal education?

At the end of the Introduction, this sentence offers a map to the reader of how the paper’s argument will develop. The reader can now expect that the manuscript will address each of these questions, in this order. I could also use large-scale signposting, such as sub-headings in the Results, to organize the reading of data related to each of these questions. In the Discussion, I can use small-scale signpost terms and phrases (i.e., however, in contrast, in addition, finally, etc.) to help the reader follow the progression of the argument I am presenting .

I must offer one word of caution here: be sure to use your signposts precisely. If not, your writing will not be logically developed and you will weaken the logos at work in the manuscript. For instance, however signposts a contrasting or contradicting idea:

I enjoy working with residents; however , I loathe completing in-training evaluation reports.

If the writer uses the wrong signpost, the meaning of the sentence falls apart, and so does the logos:

I enjoy working with residents; alternatively , I loathe completing in-training evaluation reports.

Alternatively indicates a different option or possibility. This sentence does not present two different alternatives; it presents two contrasting ideas. Using alternatively confuses the meaning of the sentence, and thus impairs logos.

With clear and precise signposting, the reader will easily follow your argument across the manuscript. This supports the logos you develop as you guide the reader to your conclusions.

Pathos is the rhetorical appeal that focuses on the reader. Pathos refers to the emotions that are stirred in the reader while reading the manuscript. The author should seek to trigger specific emotional reactions in their writing. And, yes, there is room for emotions in scientific research articles. Some of my favourite manuscripts in The Writer’s Craft series are those that help authors elicit specific emotions from the reader.

For instance, in Joining the conversation: the problem/gap/hook heuristic Lingard highlights the importance of ‘hooking’ your audience. The hook ‘convinces readers that this gap [in the current literature] is of consequence’ [ 4 ]. The author must persuade the reader that the argument is important and worthy of the reader’s attention. This is an appeal to the readers’ emotions.

Another example is found in Bonfire red titles. As Lingard explains, the title of your manuscript is ‘advertising for what is inside your research paper’ [ 5 ]. The title must attract the readers’ attention and create a desire within them to read your manuscript. Here, again, is pathos in action in a scientific research paper: grab the reader’s attention from the very first word of the title.

Beyond those already addressed in The Writer’s Craft series, another rhetorical technique that appeals to the emotions of the reader is the strategic use of God-terms [ 1 ] . Burke defined God-terms as words or phrases that are ‘the ultimates of motivation,’ embodying characteristics that are fundamentally valued by humans. To use an analogy from card games (e.g., bridge or euchre), God-terms are like emotional trump cards. God-terms like freedom, justice, and duty call on shared human values, trumping contradictory feelings. By alluding to God-terms in our research, we increase the emotional appeal of our writing. Let us reconsider the example from above:

While burnout continues to plague our residents, medical educators have yet to identify the root causes of this problem. We owe it to our residents to delve into this area of inquiry to secure their wellbeing over their lifetime of clinical service .

Here, the author reminds the reader that residents will be in service as physicians for their lifetime, and that we have a  duty (i.e., we owe it ) to support them in that calling to meet the public’s healthcare needs. Invoking the God-terms of service and duty, the writer taps into the reader’s sense of responsibility to support these learners.

It is important not to overplay pathos in a scientific research paper—i.e., readers are keenly intelligent scholars who will easily identify emotional exaggeration. Consider this variation on the previous example:

While burnout continues to ruin the lives of our residents, medical educators have neglected to identify the root causes of this problem. We have a moral obligation to our residents to delve into this area of inquiry to secure their wellbeing over their lifetime of clinical service.

This rephrasing is likely to create a sense of unease in the reader because of the emotional exaggerations it uses. By over-amplifying the appeals to emotion, this rephrasing elicits feelings of refusal and rejection in the reader. Instead of drawing the reader in, it pushes the reader away. When it comes to pathos, a light hand is best.

Peter Gould famously stated: ‘data can never speak for themselves’ [ 6 ]. Researchers must explain them. In that explaining, we endeavour to convince the audience that our propositions should be accepted. While the science in our research is at the core of that persuasion, there are techniques from rhetoric that can help us convince readers to accept our arguments. Ethos, logos and pathos are appeals that, when used intentionally and judiciously, can buoy the persuasive power of your manuscripts.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States of America’s Department of Defense or other federal agencies.

PhD, is a professor in the Department of Medicine at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, MD. Her program of research investigates the many kinds of teams involved in health professions education (e.g., interprofessional clinical care teams, health professions education scholarship unit teams, etc.). A self-professed ‘theory junky’, she uses theories from the social sciences and humanities, and qualitative methods/methodologies to build practical, theory-based knowledge.

Wherever there is meaning there is persuasion. —Kenneth Burke [ 1 ]

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, ethos, pathos, logos, kairos: the modes of persuasion and how to use them.

General Education

Ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos all stem from rhetoric—that is, speaking and writing effectively. You might find the concepts in courses on rhetoric, psychology, English, or in just about any other field!

The concepts of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos are also called the modes of persuasion, ethical strategies, or rhetorical appeals. They have a lot of different applications ranging from everyday interactions with others to big political speeches to effective advertising.

Read on to learn about what the modes of persuasion are, how they’re used, and how to identify them!

What Are the Modes of Persuasion?

As you might have guessed from the sound of the words, ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos go all the way back to ancient Greece. The concepts were introduced in Aristotle’s Rhetoric , a treatise on persuasion that approached rhetoric as an art, in the fourth century BCE.

Rhetoric was primarily concerned with ethos, pathos, and logos, but kairos, or the idea of using your words at the right time, was also an important feature of Aristotle’s teachings.

However, kairos was particularly interesting to the Sophists, a group of intellectuals who made their living teaching a variety of subjects. The Sophists stressed the importance of structuring rhetoric around the ideal time and place.

Together, all four concepts have become the modes of persuasion, though we typically focus on ethos, pathos, and logos.

What Is Ethos?

Though you may not have heard the term before, ‘ethos’ is a common concept. You can think of it as an appeal to authority or character—persuasive techniques using ethos will attempt to persuade you based on the speaker’s social standing or knowledge. The word ethos even comes from the Greek word for character.

An ethos-based argument will include a statement that makes use of the speaker or writer’s position and knowledge. For example, hearing the phrase, “As a doctor, I believe,” before an argument about physical health is more likely to sway you than hearing, “As a second-grade teacher, I believe.”

Likewise, celebrity endorsements can be incredibly effective in persuading people to do things . Many viewers aspire to be like their favorite celebrities, so when they appear in advertisements, they're more likely to buy whatever they're selling to be more like them. The same is true of social media influencers, whose partnerships with brands can have huge financial benefits for marketers .

In addition to authority figures and celebrities, according to Aristotle, we’re more likely to trust people who we perceive as having good sense, good morals, and goodwill —in other words, we trust people who are rational, fair, and kind. You don’t have to be famous to use ethos effectively; you just need whoever you’re persuading to perceive you as rational, moral, and kind.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos, which comes from the Greek word for suffering or experience, is rhetoric that appeals to emotion. The emotion appealed to can be a positive or negative one, but whatever it is, it should make people feel strongly as a means of getting them to agree or disagree.

For example, imagine someone asks you to donate to a cause, such as saving rainforests. If they just ask you to donate, you may or may not want to, depending on your previous views. But if they take the time to tell you a story about how many animals go extinct because of deforestation, or even about how their fundraising efforts have improved conditions in the rainforests, you may be more likely to donate because you’re emotionally involved.

But pathos isn’t just about creating emotion; it can also be about counteracting it. For example, imagine a teacher speaking to a group of angry children. The children are annoyed that they have to do schoolwork when they’d rather be outside. The teacher could admonish them for misbehaving, or, with rhetoric, he could change their minds.

Suppose that, instead of punishing them, the teacher instead tries to inspire calmness in them by putting on some soothing music and speaking in a more hushed voice. He could also try reminding them that if they get to work, the time will pass quicker and they’ll be able to go outside to play.

Aristotle outlines emotional dichotomies in Rhetoric . If an audience is experiencing one emotion and it’s necessary to your argument that they feel another, you can counterbalance the unwanted emotion with the desired one . The dichotomies, expanded upon after Aristotle, are :

• Anger/Calmness
• Friendship/Enmity
• Fear/Confidence
• Shame/Shamelessness
• Kindness/Unkindness
• Pity/Indignation
• Envy/Emulation

Note that these can work in either direction; it’s not just about swaying an audience from a negative emotion to a positive one. 

However, changing an audience's emotion based on false or misleading information is often seen as manipulation rather than persuasion. Getting into the hows and whys requires a dive into the ethics of rhetoric , but suffice to say that when you attempt to deceive an audience, that is manipulation.

If you really want to get an audience fired up about something, you can inspire righteous anger, which may or may not be manipulation. If somebody is offended that you’ve asked them for something, you can try making them feel sorry for you by turning indignation into pity— that’s manipulation.

What Is Logos?

Logos comes from a Greek word of multiple meanings, including “ground,” “speech,” and “reason.” In rhetoric, it specifically refers to having a sense of logic to your persuasion; logos-based rhetoric is founded in logic and reason rather than emotion, authority, or personality.

A logic-based argument appeals to a person’s sense of reason— good logos-based rhetoric will persuade people because the argument is well-reasoned and based in fact. There are two common approaches to logos: deductive and inductive arguments.

Deductive arguments build on statements to reach a conclusion —in effect, the conclusion is reached in reverse. A common method is to propose multiple true statements which are combined to reach a conclusion, such as the classic method of proving that Socrates is mortal.

All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates must be mortal.

That’s not really a case that needs to be argued, but we can apply the same framework to other arguments as well. For example, we need energy to live. Food gives the body energy. Therefore, we need food to live.  

All of this is based on things we can prove, and results in a conclusion that is true , not just theorized. Deductive reasoning works on the assumption that A = B, B = C, so therefore A = C. But this also supposes that all the information is true, which is not always the case.

Sometimes the conclusions you reach with deductive reasoning can be valid, as in the reasoning makes sense, but the conclusion may not be necessarily true. If we return to the Socrates argument, we could propose that:

All men eat apples. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates must eat apples.

The problem is that we can’t prove that all men eat apples —some do, some don’t. Some might eat an apple once but never again. But based on our arguments, the conclusion that Socrates must eat apples is valid.

A strong deductive argument for logos-based reasoning will be composed of provable facts that can reach a provable conclusion. However, a valid but not entirely sound argument can also be effective—but be wary of shifting from persuasion to manipulation!

Another approach to logos-based rhetoric is inductive reasoning, which, unlike deductive reasoning, results in a probable argument rather than a definite one. That doesn’t mean that it is less effective—many scientific concepts we accept as truth are inductive theories simply because we cannot travel back in time and prove them— but rather that inductive reasoning is based on eliminating the impossible and ending in an argument that is based in sound logic and fact, but that may not necessarily be provable.

For example, all people with a cough have a cold. Kelly has a cough. Therefore, Kelly likely has a cold.

Our conclusion is likely , but not absolute. It’s possible that Kelly doesn’t have a cold—not because she doesn't have a cough, but because there are other possible causes, such as having allergies or having just breathed in some dust. The conclusion that she has a cold is likely based on data, but not absolute.

Another example would be that Kelly picks her nose. Kelly is a woman, therefore all women must pick their nose.

Inductive reasoning is based on generalizations. The first example, in which Kelly likely has a cold, makes sense because it’s based on something provable—that a sampling of people who have a cough have colds—and followed up with a likely conclusion. In the second example, this is a less sensible conclusion because it’s based on extrapolation from a single reference point.

If we reverse the claim and say that all women pick their noses, and Kelly is a woman, therefore Kelly must pick her nose, that would be more sound logic. Still not necessarily true—not all women pick their noses—but a more sound example of inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning can still be incredibly effective in persuasion, provided that your information is well-reasoned. Inductive reasoning creates a hypothesis that can be tested; its conclusion is not necessarily true, but can be examined.

As always, be wary of venturing into manipulation, which is more likely to be based on erroneous or misleading facts.

What Is Kairos?

Kairos is the Greek word for the opportune moment, which is precisely what it means in rhetoric. According to this principle, the time in which an argument is deployed is as important as the argument itself. An argument at the wrong time or to the wrong audience will be wasted; to be effective, you must also consider when you are speaking and to whom.

In effect, kairos means choosing the correct rhetorical device to match the audience and space in which you’re attempting to persuade. If you wanted to persuade people to go vegetarian, the middle of a hot dog-eating contest is probably not the right time. Likewise, you’re probably not going to persuade a room of data-driven scientists of something by appealing to pathos or ethos; logos is probably your best bet.

In essence, kairos asks you to consider the context and atmosphere of the argument you’re making. How can you deploy your argument better considering time and space? Should you wait, or is time of the essence?

As Aristotle famously said, “Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

The goal of kairos is to achieve exactly that. Effective use of kairos strengthens your persuasion ability by considering how people are already feeling based on context. How can you influence or counteract that? Or maybe pathos isn’t the right approach—maybe cold hard facts, using logos, is more suited. Kairos works in conjunction with the other modes of persuasion to strengthen your argument, so as you’re putting a persuasive piece together, consider how and when it’ll be deployed!

How to Identify Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Understanding how the modes of persuasion work can make you better at identifying and picking them out. Not only is a better understanding of them useful for composing your own arguments, but it’s also beneficial when seeing other people’s arguments. When you understand how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos work, you’re less susceptible to them.

Advertising is one of the places we see the modes of persuasion most often. Looking at each of these advertisements, you can see how they use each mode of persuasion to convince audiences to convince an audience of something.

Using celebrities is a classic example of ethos, which uses authority or recognition to convince an audience of something. In this case, celebrities like Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Janelle Monáe discuss the importance of voting.

It doesn’t matter that they’re not politicians or political scientists; audiences find them appealing and genuine. When they speak of the importance of voting, audiences listen because they like what these figures have to say . If talented, famous people like this are taking the time to vote, it must be important!

Historians or those well-versed in politics might make different arguments about why audiences should vote, but in this case, the goal is to inspire people. When we see people we admire doing things, we want to do them too; hence the reason that ethos works so well.

ASPCA’s commercials are some of the most infamous examples of pathos in advertising. Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays over footage of abused animals in shelters, encouraging viewers to donate money to support the organization.

It’s not hard to understand why it works; both the song and the imagery are heartbreaking! You can’t help but feel sad when you see it, and that sadness, when followed up by a prompt to donate, encourages you to take immediate action.  And these ads are effective— the campaign raised millions of dollars for ASPCA .

By appealing to our emotions and making us feel sad, this advertisement encourages us to act. That’s a classic use of ethos—it influences our feelings through the one-two punch of sad music and imagery, encouraging us to perform the desired action.

In some cases, emotion and authority aren’t the right tactic. Logos often appears in tech advertisements, such as this one for the iPhone XS and XR.

Notice how the advertisement focuses on product shots and technological terms. Most audiences won’t know what an A12 bionic neural engine is, but it sounds impressive. Likewise, that “12 MPf/1.8 wide-angle lens, with larger, deeper 1.4 micron pixels” is pretty meaningless to most people, but the numbers suggest that this phone is something special because it uses scientific-sounding language.

It doesn’t matter whether audiences really understand what’s being said or not. What matters is that they feel confident that the ad is selling them something they need —in this case, impressive technological specifications that make this phone an improvement over others.

Kairos should ideally factor into all uses of the modes of persuasion, but timeliness can also be a big selling point. In this Christmas-themed M&Ms advertisement, the company uses timely humor to forge a connection between the holidays and M&Ms.

Because these commercials have been running for such a long time, there’s also a nostalgic attachment to them. Just as people look forward to new Budweiser advertisements during the Super Bowl, others look forward to seeing M&Ms or the Coca-Cola polar bear during the holidays.

Though this commercial doesn’t go out of its way to tell you the benefits of M&Ms, it does forge a connection between M&Ms and Christmas, encouraging people to purchase them around the holidays.

Examples of the Modes of Persuasion

Now that you’ve had some exposure to how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos function and what they can do, you can test your ability to recognize them using the images below!

There are a few things to notice about this image:

• The anonymous figure
• The language
• The use of a statistic

Can you figure out which mode of persuasion this represents?

The fact that the figure is anonymous tells us it’s probably not ethos. While we might be influenced by a person who’s in shape, there’s not really an appeal here based on the person—they’re just an image to support the ad.

“DOMINATE” is a pretty loaded word, suggesting that this may have elements of pathos.

However, take a look at that statistic. Whether it’s true or not, a hard statistic like that suggests that this ad is using logos to appeal to viewers. You can draw out an argument from there—75% of users lose weight within weeks. You’re a user. Therefore, you will likely lose weight within weeks.

What do you notice about this image?

• The way the text frames the woman’s body
• The name of the perfume
• The color choice

What mode of persuasion is this?

Again, we don’t know who the model is, and perfume isn’t going to make us look like her, so we can count ethos out.

The ad seems pretty intent on making us look at certain things—the woman’s lips and chest in particular. What is it trying to make us feel?

“FORBIDDEN FRUIT” has a connotation of sensuality.

Red is a color commonly associated with passion.

When you combine the photo, the framing, the perfume name, and the color, you get a strong sense of sex appeal from the advertisement. This makes it an example of pathos—the ad is trying to make us feel a certain way . If we buy this perfume, maybe we would feel attractive, too.

How about this advertisement?

• A serious-looking photo
• Text promising “no more back pain”
• “Doctor recommended.”

Seeing a doctor might make you tempted to think the answer is logos, but there’s no appeal to logic here.

“No more back pain,” is a nice promise, but there’s no attempt to appeal to emotions, so it can’t be pathos.

What’s important in this image is the combination of the doctor in the image and the line “doctor recommended.” This doctor might not be famous, but he does have authority, making this an example of ethos.

Our confidence in this treatment grows because we trust that a doctor understands how to address back pain.

What mode of persuasion is this?  Think about:

• The framing

She does look fashionable and the ad mentions stylists, so it’s possible that this is ethos.

There are no statistics or arguments being made, so the answer probably isn’t logos.

Pathos is possible, but despite having a heavily made-up model, this ad is far less about sex appeal than the previous one.

But the text mentions a specific holiday—New Year’s—suggesting that this is kairos. Kairos can, and often should, be combined with all the modes of persuasion to be even more effective. In this case, the model’s appearance could suggest either ethos or pathos in addition to kairos. The message here is that you should act now, at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the deal and to start the year off with a new style, much like the one the model is sporting.

Key Tips for Identifying Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Now that you know the difference between all the modes of persuasion, you’ll have a much easier time identifying them. If you run into trouble, you can always ask questions about what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading to understand what mode of persuasion it’s using.

#1: Is It Related to a Specific Time?

If the argument is based on a specific day or context, such as Valentine’s Day or appealing only to a select group of people, such as people with dogs, it’s more likely to be kairos.

#2: Does It Involve a Celebrity or Authority Figure?

Celebrities are often a dead giveaway that an argument is using ethos. But authority figures, such as doctors, dentists, or politicians, can also be used to appeal to ethos. Even regular, everyday people can work, particularly when combined with pathos, to appeal to you based on a mutual connection you have.

#3: Does It Involve Statistics?

Statistics are a huge clue that an argument is using logos. But logos can also just be a logical argument, such as that if plants need water, and it’s hard to remember to water them, you should buy an automatic plant waterer. It makes perfect sense, making you more likely to buy it, rather than changing your habits to remember to water your plants more frequently.

#4: Does It Influence Your Emotions?

If an argument tries to change your emotions, whether by making you sad, happy, angry, or something else entirely, it’s a good indicator that it’s using pathos. Sex appeal is one of the biggest examples of pathos in advertising, appearing everywhere from makeup ads to car commercials to hamburger advertisements.

What’s Next?

Need help understanding the historical context for The Great Gatsby to perfect your kairos-based argument?

You can always combine the modes of persuasion with literary devices to make your arguments even stronger!

Learn how to say "good morning" in Japanese ! Even if it's not a mode of persuasion, it's just good manners.

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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10 The role of pathos : from argumentative responses to feeling and emotions

• Published: August 2017
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Chapter 10 is devoted to the role of emotions or pathos. Pathos was the term ordinarily used to denote the notion of audience. For the first time since Aristotle, emotions receive a full role in a treatise on rhetoric. The responses of the audience are modulated by its emotions. What is their nature and how precisely do they operate? The areas of political and legal rhetoric are examined here in the light of an original view of the theory of distance: values at greater distance become passions at short distance, and this is one of the features which demarcates politics from law. Law and politics are not merely argumentative, nor are they entirely emotional. The norms they codify are often implicit in their shaping of our mutual expectations and behavior in the social world.

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How to write a dissertation proposal, how to write a book title in an essay, basic essay structure: how to build it, how to start a scholarship essay, how to focus on homework, how to write a rhetorical analysis essay.

A rhetorical analysis essay is a piece of writing that investigates someone else’s writing and the rhetorical techniques used to influence the audience through the text in a certain way. In essays of this type you won’t see much content being analyzed but rather the words, sentence structure, and other linguistic aspects. For many, such text may not turn out easy. In case you are also struggling with how to do a rhetorical analysis, we are here to help. We composed the guide below to make the writing process easier for you. 

What is Analyze and Rhetorical Style Writing

Rhetoric is the art of persuasive communication, whether in writing or speech. At its core are three key concepts: logos, ethos, and pathos. 

Logos, the logical appeal, basically means using reason and evidence to support an argument. In academic essays, for instance, you often see charts, statistics, and well-reasoned arguments that make the case irrefutable. Ethos, the ethical appeal, is how an author establishes credibility. Think of a medical doctor writing an article about health; their credentials lend weight to their words. Pathos, the emotional appeal, strives to evoke an emotional response from the audience. An advertisement showing happy families to sell a product taps into this appeal by connecting with viewers’ emotions.

Rhetorical style writing is characterized by its strategic use of these appeals to persuade an audience. This style looks not into what is said, but how it is said. It includes the tone, diction, and overall structure of the piece. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech isn’t just powerful because of its message but also because of its rhythmic structure, emotive language, and masterful delivery.

To analyze this type of writing you need to examine how these elements work together to persuade the audience. You look at the text’s context—who wrote it, when, and why. You dissect the appeals used: How does the author build credibility? What logical arguments do they present? How do they play on emotions? Each element is scrutinized to understand the overall effectiveness. When analyzing a political speech, you might note the use of ethos in referencing the speaker’s experience, logos in their logical arguments for policy, and pathos in their appeal to the audience’s hopes and fears. 

Text and Context as a Part of Rhetorical Analysis

The first thing that you should establish before diving into writing a rhetorical analysis is that a text isn’t limited to written words; it can be any form of communication like speeches, advertisements, or even satirical images. The context, as such, involves everything surrounding the text: the author, the intended audience, the time and place of production, and the purpose behind it. For example, analyzing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech requires an understanding of the civil rights movement to grasp its impact and significance fully.

Equally important in rhetorical analysis are claims, supports, and warrants. A claim is the main idea or argument the author wants to convey. Supports are the evidence or appeals (logical, ethical, emotional) used to back up the claims. Warrants are the underlying assumptions that connect the supports to the claims, often implicit but necessary for understanding the argument’s logic. For instance, an advertisement might claim that a product brings happiness (claim), show happy people using it (support), and assume that viewers will associate the product with happiness (warrant). Analyzing these elements helps in dissecting how effectively the text persuades its audience.

Easy Guide on How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis

Now, as we figured out the basics we can start writing. This might seem a daunting task, but by breaking it down into manageable steps, it becomes a clear and straightforward process. 

• Gather all necessary information using the SOAPSTone technique, which stands for Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, and Tone. For instance, when analyzing a speech by a political leader, identify the speaker’s background, the historical context of the speech, the intended audience, the purpose behind the speech, its main subject, and the overall tone used.
• Next, examine the appeals—ethos, pathos, and logos. A charity ad might use ethos by showcasing a respected figure endorsing the cause, pathos by showing heart-wrenching images of those in need, and logos by presenting statistics on how donations are used effectively.
• Then, identify the style choices and details such as word choice, repetition, and imagery. Consider how these elements contribute to the text’s effectiveness. A motivational speech might use repetitive phrases to inspire and energize the audience.
• Once you have gathered and analyzed your information, build your analysis by asking questions like, “What is the author’s intention?” and “What effect does this work have on the audience?” This will help you understand the reasoning behind the writer’s choices.

Begin your essay with a clear introduction that provides background on the author and text, followed by a thesis statement. In the body paragraphs, support your thesis with detailed analysis, using examples from the text. Finally, conclude by summarizing your main points and restating the significance of your analysis.

By following these steps and focusing on the intricate details of the text and context, you can write a compelling and insightful rhetorical analysis essay.

How to Write a Rhetorical Essay: An Example Outline

To illustrate what a properly structured rhetorical analysis looks like, we decided to create an outline below to serve as an example.

Introduction

• Hook : Start with an interesting fact or a compelling quote from the text.
• Background Information : Briefly introduce the author and the text. Mention the context in which the text was produced.
• Thesis Statement : Present your main argument about the author’s rhetorical strategies and their effectiveness.

Paragraph 1: Ethos

• Topic Sentence : Discuss how King establishes his credibility.
• Evidence and Analysis : Provide examples from the text where King references his leadership and experience.
• Connection to Thesis : Explain how these references bolster his authority and make his message more convincing.

Paragraph 2: Pathos

• Topic Sentence : Explore how King appeals to the emotions of his audience.
• Evidence and Analysis : Provide specific examples of vivid imagery and emotional language.
• Connection to Thesis : Discuss how these emotional appeals engage the audience and strengthen his overall message.

Paragraph 3: Logos

• Topic Sentence : Analyze King’s use of logical appeals.
• Evidence and Analysis : Highlight examples of logical arguments and supporting evidence.
• Connection to Thesis : Explain how logical reasoning complements his emotional and ethical appeals.

Paragraph 4: Style and Tone

• Topic Sentence : Examine King’s stylistic choices and tone.
• Evidence and Analysis : Discuss the impact of his word choice, repetition, and prophetic tone.
• Connection to Thesis : Show how these elements contribute to the enduring power of his message.
• Restate Thesis : Summarize your main argument.
• Summary of Key Points : Briefly recap the main points from the body paragraphs.
• Final Thought : Discuss the broader significance of King’s speech and its impact on society.

How do you start a rhetorical analysis essay?

You should start a rhetorical analysis essay, begin with a strong introduction that includes a brief summary of the text you’ll be analyzing. Introduce the author, the title of the work, and the main argument or purpose of the text. It’s also effective to mention the context in which the text was written and to state your thesis, which should outline your main analysis points.

What are the 4 steps to making a rhetorical analysis?

The four steps to making a rhetorical analysis are:

• Reading and annotating the text to identify the author’s purpose and the rhetorical strategies used.
• Analyzing the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) and how they contribute to the text’s effectiveness.
• Examining the style and tone of the text, considering how the author’s choices impact the audience.
• Organize your findings into a structured essay, ensuring each point is supported by evidence from the text.

What is the format of a rhetorical analysis?

Typically, a rhetorical analysis follows a structured format: an introduction with a thesis statement, body paragraphs that cover different aspects of the rhetorical strategies used in the text, and a conclusion that summarizes your analysis and restates the thesis. Each body paragraph should focus on a single element of the rhetorical strategies, providing examples and analysis.

How do you write a good hook for a rhetorical analysis essay?

To write a good hook for a rhetorical analysis essay, you should grab the reader’s attention with an interesting fact, a provocative question, a relevant quote, or a compelling anecdote related to the text you are analyzing. The hook should be engaging and lead smoothly into the introduction of the text and your thesis statement.

What not to do in a rhetorical analysis essay?

In a rhetorical analysis essay, avoid summarizing the text instead of analyzing it. Don’t ignore the rhetorical strategies and how they contribute to the text’s purpose. Refrain from expressing your personal opinions about the text’s subject matter; focus on the author’s techniques and their effectiveness. Additionally, avoid using vague statements; always back up your points with specific examples from the text.

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How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay–Examples & Template

What is a Rhetorical Analysis Essay?

A rhetorical analysis essay is, as the name suggests, an analysis of someone else’s writing (or speech, or advert, or even cartoon) and how they use not only words but also rhetorical techniques to influence their audience in a certain way. A rhetorical analysis is less interested in what the author is saying and more in how they present it, what effect this has on their readers, whether they achieve their goals, and what approach they use to get there. 

Its structure is similar to that of most essays: An Introduction presents your thesis, a Body analyzes the text you have chosen, breaks it down into sections and explains how arguments have been constructed and how each part persuades, informs, or entertains the reader, and a Conclusion section sums up your evaluation. 

Note that your personal opinion on the matter is not relevant for your analysis and that you don’t state anywhere in your essay whether you agree or disagree with the stance the author takes.

In the following, we will define the key rhetorical concepts you need to write a good rhetorical analysis and give you some practical tips on where to start.

Key Rhetorical Concepts

Your goal when writing a rhetorical analysis is to think about and then carefully describe how the author has designed their text so that it has the intended effect on their audience. To do that, you need to consider a number of key rhetorical strategies: Rhetorical appeals (“Ethos”, “Logos”, and “Pathos”), context, as well as claims, supports, and warrants.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos were introduced by Aristotle, way back in the 4th century BC, as the main ways in which language can be used to persuade an audience. They still represent the basis of any rhetorical analysis and are often referred to as the “rhetorical triangle”. 

These and other rhetorical techniques can all be combined to create the intended effect, and your job as the one analyzing a text is to break the writer’s arguments down and identify the concepts they are based on.

Rhetorical Appeals

Rhetorical appeal #1: ethos.

Ethos refers to the reputation or authority of the writer regarding the topic of their essay or speech and to how they use this to appeal to their audience. Just like we are more likely to buy a product from a brand or vendor we have confidence in than one we don’t know or have reason to distrust, Ethos-driven texts or speeches rely on the reputation of the author to persuade the reader or listener. When you analyze an essay, you should therefore look at how the writer establishes Ethos through rhetorical devices.

Does the author present themselves as an authority on their subject? If so, how? 

Do they highlight how impeccable their own behavior is to make a moral argument? 

Do they present themselves as an expert by listing their qualifications or experience to convince the reader of their opinion on something?

Rhetorical appeal #2: Pathos

The purpose of Pathos-driven rhetoric is to appeal to the reader’s emotions. A common example of pathos as a rhetorical means is adverts by charities that try to make you donate money to a “good cause”. To evoke the intended emotions in the reader, an author may use passionate language, tell personal stories, and employ vivid imagery so that the reader can imagine themselves in a certain situation and feel empathy with or anger towards others.

Rhetorical appeal #3: Logos

Logos, the “logical” appeal, uses reason to persuade. Reason and logic, supported by data, evidence, clearly defined methodology, and well-constructed arguments, are what most academic writing is based on. Emotions, those of the researcher/writer as well as those of the reader, should stay out of such academic texts, as should anyone’s reputation, beliefs, or personal opinions. 

Text and Context

To analyze a piece of writing, a speech, an advertisement, or even a satirical drawing, you need to look beyond the piece of communication and take the context in which it was created and/or published into account. 

Who is the person who wrote the text/drew the cartoon/designed the ad..? What audience are they trying to reach? Where was the piece published and what was happening there around that time? 

A political speech, for example, can be powerful even when read decades later, but the historical context surrounding it is an important aspect of the effect it was intended to have. 

Claims, Supports, and Warrants

To make any kind of argument, a writer needs to put forward specific claims, support them with data or evidence or even a moral or emotional appeal, and connect the dots logically so that the reader can follow along and agree with the points made.

The connections between statements, so-called “warrants”, follow logical reasoning but are not always clearly stated—the author simply assumes the reader understands the underlying logic, whether they present it “explicitly” or “implicitly”. Implicit warrants are commonly used in advertisements where seemingly happy people use certain products, wear certain clothes, accessories, or perfumes, or live certain lifestyles – with the connotation that, first, the product/perfume/lifestyle is what makes that person happy and, second, the reader wants to be as happy as the person in the ad. Some warrants are never clearly stated, and your job when writing a rhetorical analysis essay is therefore to identify them and bring them to light, to evaluate their validity, their effect on the reader, and the use of such means by the writer/creator. 

What are the Five Rhetorical Situations?

A “rhetorical situation” refers to the circumstance behind a text or other piece of communication that arises from a given context. It explains why a rhetorical piece was created, what its purpose is, and how it was constructed to achieve its aims.

Rhetorical situations can be classified into the following five categories:

Asking such questions when you analyze a text will help you identify all the aspects that play a role in the effect it has on its audience, and will allow you to evaluate whether it achieved its aims or where it may have failed to do so.

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Outline

Analyzing someone else’s work can seem like a big task, but as with every assignment or writing endeavor, you can break it down into smaller, well-defined steps that give you a practical structure to follow. 

To give you an example of how the different parts of your text may look when it’s finished, we will provide you with some excerpts from this rhetorical analysis essay example (which even includes helpful comments) published on the Online Writing Lab website of Excelsior University in Albany, NY. The text that this essay analyzes is this article on why one should or shouldn’t buy an Ipad. If you want more examples so that you can build your own rhetorical analysis template, have a look at this essay on Nabokov’s Lolita and the one provided here about the “Shitty First Drafts” chapter of Anne Lamott’s writing instruction book “Bird by Bird”.

Analyzing the Text

When writing a rhetorical analysis, you don’t choose the concepts or key points you think are relevant or want to address. Rather, you carefully read the text several times asking yourself questions like those listed in the last section on rhetorical situations to identify how the text “works” and how it was written to achieve that effect.

Start with focusing on the author : What do you think was their purpose for writing the text? Do they make one principal claim and then elaborate on that? Or do they discuss different topics? 

Then look at what audience they are talking to: Do they want to make a group of people take some action? Vote for someone? Donate money to a good cause? Who are these people? Is the text reaching this specific audience? Why or why not?

What tone is the author using to address their audience? Are they trying to evoke sympathy? Stir up anger? Are they writing from a personal perspective? Are they painting themselves as an authority on the topic? Are they using academic or informal language?

How does the author support their claims ? What kind of evidence are they presenting? Are they providing explicit or implicit warrants? Are these warrants valid or problematic? Is the provided evidence convincing?  

Asking yourself such questions will help you identify what rhetorical devices a text uses and how well they are put together to achieve a certain aim. Remember, your own opinion and whether you agree with the author are not the point of a rhetorical analysis essay – your task is simply to take the text apart and evaluate it.

If you are still confused about how to write a rhetorical analysis essay, just follow the steps outlined below to write the different parts of your rhetorical analysis: As every other essay, it consists of an Introduction , a Body (the actual analysis), and a Conclusion .

Rhetorical Analysis Introduction

The Introduction section briefly presents the topic of the essay you are analyzing, the author, their main claims, a short summary of the work by you, and your thesis statement . 

Tell the reader what the text you are going to analyze represents (e.g., historically) or why it is relevant (e.g., because it has become some kind of reference for how something is done). Describe what the author claims, asserts, or implies and what techniques they use to make their argument and persuade their audience. Finish off with your thesis statement that prepares the reader for what you are going to present in the next section – do you think that the author’s assumptions/claims/arguments were presented in a logical/appealing/powerful way and reached their audience as intended?

Have a look at an excerpt from the sample essay linked above to see what a rhetorical analysis introduction can look like. See how it introduces the author and article , the context in which it originally appeared , the main claims the author makes , and how this first paragraph ends in a clear thesis statement that the essay will then elaborate on in the following Body section:

Cory Doctorow ’s article on BoingBoing is an older review of the iPad , one of Apple’s most famous products. At the time of this article, however, the iPad was simply the latest Apple product to hit the market and was not yet so popular. Doctorow’s entire career has been entrenched in and around technology. He got his start as a CD-ROM programmer and is now a successful blogger and author. He is currently the co-editor of the BoingBoing blog on which this article was posted. One of his main points in this article comes from Doctorow’s passionate advocacy of free digital media sharing. He argues that the iPad is just another way for established technology companies to control our technological freedom and creativity . In “ Why I Won’t Buy an iPad (and Think You Shouldn’t, Either) ” published on Boing Boing in April of 2010, Cory Doctorow successfully uses his experience with technology, facts about the company Apple, and appeals to consumer needs to convince potential iPad buyers that Apple and its products, specifically the iPad, limit the digital rights of those who use them by controlling and mainstreaming the content that can be used and created on the device . 

Doing the Rhetorical Analysis

The main part of your analysis is the Body , where you dissect the text in detail. Explain what methods the author uses to inform, entertain, and/or persuade the audience. Use Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle and the other key concepts we introduced above. Use quotations from the essay to demonstrate what you mean. Work out why the writer used a certain approach and evaluate (and again, demonstrate using the text itself) how successful they were. Evaluate the effect of each rhetorical technique you identify on the audience and judge whether the effect is in line with the author’s intentions.

To make it easy for the reader to follow your thought process, divide this part of your essay into paragraphs that each focus on one strategy or one concept , and make sure they are all necessary and contribute to the development of your argument(s).

One paragraph of this section of your essay could, for example, look like this:

One example of Doctorow’s position is his comparison of Apple’s iStore to Wal-Mart. This is an appeal to the consumer’s logic—or an appeal to logos. Doctorow wants the reader to take his comparison and consider how an all-powerful corporation like the iStore will affect them. An iPad will only allow for apps and programs purchased through the iStore to be run on it; therefore, a customer must not only purchase an iPad but also any programs he or she wishes to use. Customers cannot create their own programs or modify the hardware in any way. 

As you can see, the author of this sample essay identifies and then explains to the reader how Doctorow uses the concept of Logos to appeal to his readers – not just by pointing out that he does it but by dissecting how it is done.

Rhetorical Analysis Conclusion

The conclusion section of your analysis should restate your main arguments and emphasize once more whether you think the author achieved their goal. Note that this is not the place to introduce new information—only rely on the points you have discussed in the body of your essay. End with a statement that sums up the impact the text has on its audience and maybe society as a whole:

Overall, Doctorow makes a good argument about why there are potentially many better things to drop a great deal of money on instead of the iPad. He gives some valuable information and facts that consumers should take into consideration before going out to purchase the new device. He clearly uses rhetorical tools to help make his case, and, overall, he is effective as a writer, even if, ultimately, he was ineffective in convincing the world not to buy an iPad . 

Frequently Asked Questions about Rhetorical Analysis Essays 

What is a rhetorical analysis essay.

A rhetorical analysis dissects a text or another piece of communication to work out and explain how it impacts its audience, how successfully it achieves its aims, and what rhetorical devices it uses to do that. 

While argumentative essays usually take a stance on a certain topic and argue for it, a rhetorical analysis identifies how someone else constructs their arguments and supports their claims.

What is the correct rhetorical analysis essay format?

Like most other essays, a rhetorical analysis contains an Introduction that presents the thesis statement, a Body that analyzes the piece of communication, explains how arguments have been constructed, and illustrates how each part persuades, informs, or entertains the reader, and a Conclusion section that summarizes the results of the analysis. 

What is the “rhetorical triangle”?

The rhetorical triangle was introduced by Aristotle as the main ways in which language can be used to persuade an audience: Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, Ethos to the writer’s status or authority, and Pathos to the reader’s emotions. Logos, Ethos, and Pathos can all be combined to create the intended effect, and your job as the one analyzing a text is to break the writer’s arguments down and identify what specific concepts each is based on.

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Understanding Pathos: the Power of Emotional Appeal in Rhetoric

This essay about pathos explains its role as an emotional appeal in rhetoric, one of Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion. It highlights how pathos engages the audience’s emotions to make messages more compelling, using examples from charity advertisements, political speeches, and literature. The essay emphasizes the importance of balancing emotional appeal with logical reasoning and ethical considerations to avoid manipulation. It also discusses the use of storytelling and visual elements to enhance pathos, while cautioning against its overuse. Overall, the essay underscores pathos’ power in making arguments relatable and impactful.

How it works

Pathos, one of the trine modes of persuasion identified by the ancient Hellenic sage Aristotle, assumes a pivotal role in the craft of rhetoric. While ethos concerns the speaker’s credibility and logos hinges on logical deduction, pity targets the audience’s sentiments, endeavoring to evoke emotions that enhance the persuasiveness of the discourse. The adept deployment of pity can metamorphose an argument, rendering it more empathetic and compelling by forging an emotional bond with the audience.

Emotional entreaty constitutes an elemental facet of human discourse.

From political orations to commercial promos, pity is wielded to solicit the audience’s compassion, ire, trepidation, or jubilation, thereby shaping their attitudes and comportment. Take, for instance, a philanthropic advertisement depicting afflicted children. The utilization of vivid imagery and soul-stirring melodies is tailored to evoke melancholy and benevolence, impelling viewers to contribute. This stratagem capitalizes on pity to instill a sense of exigency and ethical obligation.

Pathos is not confined to evoking sorrow or commiseration; it encompasses a gamut of emotions. An address that kindles sentiments of dignity and national fervor, for instance, can instigate a sentiment of solidarity and mobilization. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” oration epitomizes the efficacy of pity in praxis. King’s resonant rhetoric and emotive appeals to equity, liberation, and fraternity stirred the hearts of his audience and spurred endorsement for the civil liberties movement. By tapping into the communal consciousness and shared principles of his listeners, King adeptly employed pity to advance his crusade.

In literature, pity serves to deepen the reader’s affinity with personae and their vicissitudes. When readers empathize with personages, they become more emotionally invested in the narrative. Contemplate the character of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” Loman’s trials and eventual downfall evoke a nuanced melange of commiseration, exasperation, and despondency. Miller’s adroit utilization of pity ensures that Loman’s saga resonates on an intimate level, elucidating broader themes of defeat and disenchantment in the pursuit of the American ideal.

Nevertheless, the employment of pity must be judicious and authentic to be efficacious. Excessive reliance on emotional entreaty sans substantive argumentation can engender manipulation and undermine the overarching credibility of the discourse. In political rhetoric, for instance, an oration heavily reliant on fomenting trepidation or ire without proffering reasoned remedies may be perceived as exploitative. Aristotle himself cautioned against the misapplication of pity, underscoring that emotional appeal ought to complement rather than eclipse rational discourse and ethical considerations.

Effective employment of pity frequently entails anecdotal narration. Personal anecdotes and narratives can humanize abstract quandaries, rendering them more palpable and relatable. When a speaker shares a personal anecdote, it engenders rapport with the audience, nurturing trust and empathy. For instance, in health advocacy campaigns, a survivor’s chronicle of combating malaise can be far more resonant than statistics alone. The anecdote lends a human face to the predicament, rendering it tangible and immediate for the audience.

Visual elements also wield considerable sway in evoking pity. Images, videos, and other multimedia can evoke emotions more potently than verbal discourse alone. Commercial advertisements frequently utilize visual storytelling to cultivate an emotional rapport with the audience. A commercial depicting a familial reunion might evoke sensations of warmth and elation, associating those positive emotions with the brand being promoted.

Despite its potency, the employment of pity in rhetoric is not devoid of ethical quandaries. Manipulative or disingenuous appeals to emotion can backfire, fostering skepticism and distrust. Audiences are increasingly attuned to rhetorical stratagems, and when they discern an endeavor to manipulate their sentiments, they may reject the discourse outright. Ergo, speakers and writers must wield pity responsibly, ensuring that their emotional appeals are grounded in genuine sentiment and buttressed by logical and ethical arguments.

In conclusion, pity is a potent instrument in the craft of persuasion, capable of stirring audiences and fomenting action through emotional appeal. Its efficacy lies in its capacity to forge an emotional connection with the audience, rendering arguments more relatable and resonant. Whether in speeches, literature, advertisements, or visual media, the strategic deployment of pity can amplify the persuasiveness of a discourse. Nonetheless, it must be employed thoughtfully and ethically to preserve credibility and trust. By harmonizing emotional appeal with logical reasoning and ethical considerations, speakers and writers can harness the full potential of pity to engage and sway their audiences. Remember, this exposition serves as a springboard for reflection and further inquiry. For tailored guidance and assurance of academic rigor, contemplate soliciting the services of professionals at EduBirdie.

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Rhetorical Analysis Sample Essay

Harriet Clark

Ms. Rebecca Winter

13 Feb. 2015

Not Quite a Clean Sweep: Rhetorical Strategies in

Grose's "Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier”

A woman’s work is never done: many American women grow up with this saying and feel it to be true. 1 One such woman, author Jessica Grose, wrote “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier,” published in 2013 in the New Republic, 2 and she argues that while the men recently started taking on more of the childcare and cooking, cleaning still falls unfairly on women. 3 Grose begins building her credibility with personal facts and reputable sources, citing convincing facts and statistics, and successfully employing emotional appeals; however, toward the end of the article, her attempts to appeal to readers’ emotions weaken her credibility and ultimately, her argument. 4

In her article, Grose first sets the stage by describing a specific scenario of house-cleaning with her husband after being shut in during Hurricane Sandy, and then she outlines the uneven distribution of cleaning work in her marriage and draws a comparison to the larger feminist issue of who does the cleaning in a relationship. Grose continues by discussing some of the reasons that men do not contribute to cleaning: the praise for a clean house goes to the woman; advertising and media praise men’s cooking and childcare, but not cleaning; and lastly, it is just not fun. Possible solutions to the problem, Grose suggests, include making a chart of who does which chores, dividing up tasks based on skill and ability, accepting a dirtier home, and making cleaning more fun with gadgets. 5

Throughout her piece, Grose uses many strong sources that strengthen her credibility and appeal to ethos, as well as build her argument. 6 These sources include, “sociologists Judith Treas and Tsui-o Tai,” “a 2008 study from the University of New Hampshire,” and “P&G North America Fabric Care Brand Manager, Matthew Krehbiel” (qtd. in Grose). 7 Citing these sources boosts Grose’s credibility by showing that she has done her homework and has provided facts and statistics, as well as expert opinions to support her claim. She also uses personal examples from her own home life to introduce and support the issue, which shows that she has a personal stake in and first-hand experience with the problem. 8

Adding to her ethos appeals, Grose uses strong appeals to logos, with many facts and statistics and logical progressions of ideas. 9 She points out facts about her marriage and the distribution of household chores: “My husband and I both work. We split midnight baby feedings ...but ... he will admit that he’s never cleaned the bathroom, that I do the dishes nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows how the washer and dryer work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight months.” 10 These facts introduce and support the idea that Grose does more household chores than her husband. Grose continues with many statistics:

[A]bout 55 percent of American mothers employed full time do some housework on an average day, while only 18 percent of employed fathers do. ... [W]orking women with children are still doing a week and a half more of “second shift” work each year than their male partners. ... Even in the famously gender-neutral Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a day than their male partners. 11

These statistics are a few of many that logically support her claim that it is a substantial and real problem that men do not do their fair share of the chores. The details and numbers build an appeal to logos and impress upon the reader that this is a problem worth discussing. 12

Along with strong logos appeals, Grose effectively makes appeals to pathos in the beginning and middle sections. 13 Her introduction is full of emotionally-charged words and phrases that create a sympathetic image; Grose notes that she “was eight months pregnant” and her husband found it difficult to “fight with a massively pregnant person.” 14 The image she evokes of the challenges and vulnerabilities of being so pregnant, as well as the high emotions a woman feels at that time effectively introduce the argument and its seriousness. Her goal is to make the reader feel sympathy for her. Adding to this idea are words and phrases such as, “insisted,” “argued,” “not fun,” “sucks” “headachey,” “be judged,” “be shunned” (Grose). All of these words evoke negative emotions about cleaning, which makes the reader sympathize with women who feel “judged” and shunned”—very negative feelings. Another feeling Grose reinforces with her word choice is the concept of fairness: “fair share,” “a week and a half more of ‘second shift’ work,” “more housework,” “more gendered and less frequent.” These words help establish the unfairness that exists when women do all of the cleaning, and they are an appeal to pathos, or the readers’ feelings of frustration and anger with injustice. 15

However, the end of the article lacks the same level of effectiveness in the appeals to ethos. 16 For example, Grose notes that when men do housework, they are considered to be “’enacting “small instances of gender heroism,” or ‘SIGH’s’—which, barf.” 17 The usage of the word “barf” is jarring to the reader; unprofessional and immature, it is a shift from the researched, intelligent voice she has established and the reader is less likely to take the author seriously. This damages the strength of her credibility and her argument. 18

Additionally, her last statement in the article refers to her husband in a way that weakens the argument. 19 While returning to the introduction’s hook in the conclusion is a frequently-used strategy, Grose chooses to return to her discussion of her husband in a humorous way: Grose discusses solutions, and says there is “a huge, untapped market ... for toilet-scrubbing iPods. I bet my husband would buy one.” 20 Returning to her own marriage and husband is an appeal to ethos or personal credibility, and while that works well in the introduction, in the conclusion, it lacks the strength and seriousness that the topic deserves and was given earlier in the article. 21

Though Grose begins the essay by effectively persuading her readers of the unfair distribution of home-maintenance cleaning labor, she loses her power in the end, where she most needs to drive home her argument. Readers can see the problem exists in both her marriage and throughout the world; however, her shift to humor and sarcasm makes the reader not take the problem as seriously in the end. 22 Grose could have more seriously driven home the point that a woman’s work could be done: by a man. 23

Works Cited

Grose, Jessica. “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier.” New Republic. The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

• Article author's claim or purpose
• Summary of the article's main point in the second paragraph (could also be in the introduction)
• Third paragraph begins with a transition and topic sentence that reflects the first topic in the thesis
• Quotes illustrate how the author uses appeals to ethos
• Analysis explains how the quotes show the effective use of ethos as noted in the thesis
• Transition and topic sentence about the second point from the thesis
• Quote that illustrates appeals to logos
• Analysis explains how the quotes show the effective use of logos, as noted in the thesis
• Transition and topic sentence about the third point from the thesis
• Quotes that illustrate appeals to pathos
• Analysis explains how the quotes show the effective use of pathos, as noted in the thesis
• Transition and topic sentence about fourth point from the thesis
• Quote illustrates how the author uses appeal to ethos
• Analysis explains how quote supports thesis
• Transition and topic sentence about fourth point from thesis
• Conclusion returns to the ideas in the thesis and further develops them
• Last sentence returns to the hook in the introduction

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Theme of Pathos in "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

• Categories: Letter From Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King

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Pathos (Emotions, Values)

Pathos  is a quality of an experience in life, or a work of art, that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy, and sorrow. Pathos can be expressed through words, pictures, or even with gestures of the body. Pathos is an important tool of persuasion in arguments because it is a method of convincing people with an argument drawn out through an emotional response. Analyzing examples of pathos, one would come to the conclusion that it differs from the other rhetorical appeals of persuasion, namely ethos and logos, in several significant ways. Ethos means convincing others through the credibility of a persuader or of the argument itself, while logos is a method to convince others by employing reliable, sufficient logic and reason. But only pathos is employed to specifically trigger the emotional states of the readers and listeners and thus, is an incredibly powerful, but also incredibly manipulative, method of appeal.

Pathos is an important tool of persuasion in arguments. Pathos is a method of convincing people with an argument drawn out through an emotional response. Analyzing examples of pathos, one would come to the conclusion that it differs from other “ingredients of persuasion,” namely “ethos” and “logos,” in that it requires us to try to quantify subjective, emotional and values-based assumptions in our quest to understand and evaluate academic arguments. The use of pathos is called a “pathetic appeal.” Note that this is very different from our usual understanding of the word “pathetic.” “Pathos” is used to describe the rhetor’s attempt to appeal to “an audience’s sense of identity, their self-interest, and their emotions.” If the rhetor can create a common sense of identity with their audience, then the rhetor is using a pathetic appeal. “Pathos” most often refers to an attempt to engage an audience’s emotions. Think about the different emotions people are capable of feeling: they include love, pity, sorrow, affection, anger, fear, greed, lust, and hatred. If a rhetor tries to make an audience feel emotions in response to what is being said or written, then they are using pathos.

Common Examples of Pathos

For a better understanding of the subject, let us examine a few pathos examples from daily conversations:

• “If we don’t leave this place soon, we’ll be yelling for help. There’s no one to help us here, let’s get out of here and live.” – This statement evokes emotions of fear.
• The “Made in America” label on various products sold in America tries to enhance sales by appealing to customers’ sense of patriotism.
• Ads encouraging charitable donations show small children living in pathetic conditions, to evoke pity in people.
• Referring to a country as “the motherland” stirs up patriotic feelings in individuals living in that country or state.
• A soft, instrumental symphony may arouse people emotionally.

Resources for studying and using Pathos in Arguments

• View the video:  What is Pathos? ,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6JQkXwgMVk&feature=youtu.be
• View  the video:  Four Ways to Persuade with Emotion (Pathos) ,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5k5Fkn8eAw&feature=youtu.be
• View  the handout:  Pathos
• View  the handout:  Using Logos, Pathos & Ethos

Using Pathos Correctly

Whether we are making arguments or analyzing them, it is important that we use Pathos carefully. Often, our emotions can get in the way or clear and critical thinking on an issue. Pathos can and should be used to clarify how a well-supported position relates to our values and beliefs but should never be used to manipulate, confuse or inflate an issue beyond what the evidence is capable of supporting.

The Science of Emotions

The following three TED Talks each address the science and growing body of research that explores the biological origins of our emotional states and what we can learn about ourselves from carefully studying our feelings. While not addressing the techniques of argument analysis and critical thinking directly, we can learn a great deal from these talks about the way Pathos is used to influence our choices, our perceptions, our thoughts, values and beliefs by understanding how emotions work and how, possibly, to better control them.

• View  the video:  Why What We Feel Matters More Than What We Think ,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsDVCQnqcy4&feature=youtu.be
• View  the video:  Why You Feel What You Feel ,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rRgpPbR5w&feature=youtu.be
• View  the video:  The Science of Emotions , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8&feature=youtu.be

These TED Talks give us a great deal of information on the science of emotions and how we can use that data to better understand and work with our feelings. Some things to consider in summary:

• Humans are very complex emotional creatures who use their feelings as much as, or even more than, their thoughts to make decisions in the world.
• Even though scientists have graphed close to 35,000 distinct emotions, most people only feel around 10-12 of them with any regularity.
• Of those top 12, the overwhelming majority of people make most of their decisions based on just three: love, hatred and fear.
• We make, on average, around 33,000 individual choices a day. If the data is correct, most of those decisions are governed, at least in part, by our reactions to our internal states of love, hatred and/or fear.
• So if we are not aware of (and at least somewhat in control of) how we process these emotions, anyone who wishes to manipulate us (politicians, advertisers, abusive partners, incompetent writing professors, etc.) can misuse  Pathos  in manipulative ways to trigger states of love, hatred or fear in us to make us more susceptible to accepting or rejecting a given argument without fully considering the merits of its evidence.

Critical Thinking Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Gurevich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Build a Corporate Culture That Works

There’s a widespread understanding that managing corporate culture is key to business success. Yet few companies articulate their culture in such a way that the words become an organizational reality that molds employee behavior as intended.

All too often a culture is described as a set of anodyne norms, principles, or values, which do not offer decision-makers guidance on how to make difficult choices when faced with conflicting but equally defensible courses of action.

The trick to making a desired culture come alive is to debate and articulate it using dilemmas. If you identify the tough dilemmas your employees routinely face and clearly state how they should be resolved—“In this company, when we come across this dilemma, we turn left”—then your desired culture will take root and influence the behavior of the team.

To develop a culture that works, follow six rules: Ground your culture in the dilemmas you are likely to confront, dilemma-test your values, communicate your values in colorful terms, hire people who fit, let culture drive strategy, and know when to pull back from a value statement.

Start by thinking about the dilemmas your people will face.

Idea in Brief

The problem.

There’s a widespread understanding that managing corporate culture is key to business success. Yet few companies articulate their corporate culture in such a way that the words become an organizational reality that molds employee behavior as intended.

What Usually Happens

How to fix it.

Follow six rules: Ground your culture in the dilemmas you are likely to confront, dilemma-test your values, communicate your values in colorful terms, hire people who fit, let culture drive strategy, and know when to pull back from a value.

At the beginning of my career, I worked for the health-care-software specialist HBOC. One day, a woman from human resources came into the cafeteria with a roll of tape and began sticking posters on the walls. They proclaimed in royal blue the company’s values: “Transparency, Respect, Integrity, Honesty.” The next day we received wallet-sized plastic cards with the same words and were asked to memorize them so that we could incorporate them into our actions. The following year, when management was indicted on 17 counts of conspiracy and fraud, we learned what the company’s values really were.

• EM Erin Meyer is a professor at INSEAD, where she directs the executive education program Leading Across Borders and Cultures. She is the author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business (PublicAffairs, 2014) and coauthor (with Reed Hastings) of No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Penguin, 2020). ErinMeyerINSEAD

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Maury Yeston’s score, stupendously played and sung, is the star of the final production of an excellent Encores! season at New York City Center.

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By Jesse Green

Among the 1,500 people who died aboard R.M.S. Titanic on April 15, 1912, eight were musicians , playing through the ship’s last hours to solace themselves and their doomed companions. It seems only fitting, then, that among the many ways to love the splendid Encores! revival of “Titanic,” which opened on Tuesday at New York City Center, the best is as a tribute to the power of music to address the largest and gravest human emotions.

And what music! Though fully a modern theatrical work, the score by Maury Yeston harks back to the grandeur and pathos of period English symphonists. In “Godspeed Titanic,” his glorious hymn to the ship upon its departure, it’s Elgar and Vaughan Williams you hear. When Peter Stone’s book requires a more expository style to depict the class contrasts onboard, it often arrives in the operetta voice of Arthur Sullivan. For comic bits and social dances, Yeston ventriloquizes ragtime and early salon-style jazz. All of this is wound together in a seamless composition that could almost stand on its own.

Or at least it could in the Encores! revival, which features one of the series’ largest orchestras — larger even than the one in the pit at the show’s 1997 Broadway premiere. Here the 30 instrumentalists are fully visible, on a platform above the stage, responding to the music direction of Rob Berman with full drama and no schmaltz. Seeing them play almost continuously as the action below hurtles toward disaster — there are nearly two hours of music in a production that’s barely longer — further echoes and honors the efforts of their Edwardian colleagues.

The cast of 32, especially when singing en masse, does the same for the lost passengers. (The vocal arrangements are thrilling.) At times, the beauty and force made me cry, then blew the tears out of my eyes.

A focus on musical excellence is more than just a welcome return to the Encores! mission (as this entire season has been). That mission — to revive shows that would be difficult to produce otherwise, in simple stagings that prioritize the spirit of their original musical intention — is a bull’s-eye for “Titanic,” which thematically and otherwise depends on its size. Even so, it is a test for the series, which, over the years, has enhanced its sets, costumes and choreography to a nearly commercial level, sometimes at the expense of other values.

But in approaching “Titanic,” the director Anne Kauffman, represented on Broadway this season by the exquisite “Mary Jane,” has moved decisively back toward bare bones. Not that there was much choice: An Encores! revival could not begin to encompass the show’s drama by visual means, as the original Broadway production did with massive decks lifting, tilting and sliding. In that version, the ship’s architect, Thomas Andrews, was killed by a rogue piano.

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Nell Irvin Painter’s understanding of America is beautiful and bracing. We should listen.

“I Just Keep Talking” brings together wide-ranging and pointed essays by the author of “The History of White People.”

From the opening sentences of her new collection, “ I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays ,” historian Nell Irvin Painter addresses readers in a voice brimming with knowledge, clarity and, most delightfully, confidence. As she writes, it would have been a terrible thing had she died young, “during the full-blown era of White-male-default segregation, discrimination, and disappearance that wound down only yesterday. I would have disappeared from memory, just another forgotten Black woman scholar, invisible to history and to histography.” And poor readers would have been deprived of her droll wit and self-assured wisdom.

It’s no small thing that in an era filled with grievances based on injuries that are sometimes profound and often perceived, Painter makes it clear that she has not come to this memoir to reclaim a lost or damaged part of herself. She recounts her response to an admirer who once inquired about what she did for healing. “‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m not broken.’ Not broken, but on occasion frustrated, indignant — self-righteously — pissed off with cause, often exhausted, but mostly and permanently grateful for the people who have protected me, mentored me, supported me over so many decades.” This is an invigorating introduction, full of certainty and strength. Painter has moved through her professional life always knowing her worth, never doubting her intelligence and believing that those who might refuse to listen to her insight would be lesser for their decision.

Perhaps it requires a historian to fully grasp the importance — or at least the impact — of telling one’s own story with a certain brio. Painter, 81, is an esteemed historian retired from Princeton University who studied painting later in life, including at the Rhode Island School of Design. (She wrote about that experience in an earlier memoir, “ Old in Art School .”) The essays in “I Just Keep Talking,” which reflect upon the meaning of “Whiteness,” our understanding of enslavement and the power of nuance, among other subjects, are accompanied by her artwork, which sometimes amplifies her words and sometimes stands in their stead. It is a beautiful book. But its power ultimately rests in the sentences, not the pictures.

In some cases, Painter turns her attention to long-ago history, such as the legacy of Sojourner Truth. She informs readers that the 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist did not utter the most famous phrase attributed to her: “Ain’t I a woman?” If Truth had, in fact, asked the question, Painter says, society’s answer would have been “no.” The answer not only would have reflected the circumstances of the times but would have undercut the way in which Truth understood her power and the skill with which she used it.

The Truth sketched by Painter, in an essay from 1994, is more complex than the one who has been reduced to a misattributed slogan. Truth eschewed the trappings of intellectualism and freedom as used by orator Frederick Douglass, and built her “public persona to establish that what had happened to her — her enslavement, rather than her reason — lent her a unique wisdom.”

Painter’s assessment of Truth is searing, sad and deeply revealing to a lay reader. Truth understood a reality of her time, which is that “in the eyes of most nineteenth-century Americans to be both memorable and woman at the same time simply was not possible. Black women’s individual experience had either to be reconstructed as something emblematically Negro — that is, as enslaved — or to be erased.”

As always, understanding our history means understanding ourselves. We carry our history with us: what we’ve learned in textbooks, what has been burnished in familial oral histories and what has been prettied up by politicians. Painter reminds us of history’s complications and subtleties. She encourages civilians — not just activists or academics — to ask all the pertinent questions, even the uncomfortable ones or those that are contrary to our individual politics and preferences.

What did slavery do to those who were in bondage? But also, what did it do to those who enforced it? Painter is insistent in her refusal to cave to the “national hunger for simplifying history.” She is a dogged corrector of the public record. She has even included in this book a letter to the editor she had published in the New Yorker in 2022, in which she carefully disentangles Truth from the famous slogan.

Painter does not limit her sharp critiques to distant ancestors and abolished institutions; she considers still-vibrant personalities and more recent upheavals. She takes us back to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas in 1991, during which Anita Hill, in the pre-#MeToo era, testified to Thomas’s sexual harassment of her. Painter highlights the way in which Thomas forced Hill into the role of spoiler of circumstances that were not yet a fait accompli.

“In a struggle between himself and a woman of his same race, Thomas executed a deft strategy,” Painter writes. “He erected a tableau of White-Black racism that allowed him to occupy the position of the race . By reintroducing concepts of White power, Thomas made himself into the Black person in his story. Then, in the first move of a two-step strategy, he cast Anita Hill into the role of Black woman as traitor to the race .”

Painter continues: “The most common formula expressing minority status is ‘women and Blacks.’ As the emblematic woman is White and the emblematic Black is male, Black women generally are not as easy to comprehend symbolically.”

The racial and gender dynamics that were evident during that 20th-century Shakespearean drama continue to resonate in this century. Black music mogul Sean Combs faces accusations of harassment and violence by women over whom he wielded power. Thomas remains a controversial figure, facing scrutiny over his ethics on the bench and questions about potential conflicts of interest . And Hill has become a revered standard-bearer of a new generation of women who have spoken their truth under daunting circumstances, including Christine Blasey Ford during the 2018 confirmation hearings of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

History simply refuses to remain in the past.

Painter is also the author of “The History of White People” (2010), an exploration of how and why certain individuals were sorted into that racial category. Its sweeping audacity left some observers bemused, not by what it said about our construction of race but by the skin color of the woman who wrote it. Painter has swagger. And in this memoir, she takes advantage of all the privileges of a historian to take an arm’s-distance look at a people, not just those who look like her . She explains Whiteness and how the concept politically evolved during the presidency of Donald Trump .

Whiteness had always been the default, the standard against which all others were measured. Social and political acceptability were based on how closely one hewed to the White ideal. To claim Whiteness as an identity, however, was problematic, because those who did so were white nationalists and supremacists. They were members of the Ku Klux Klan. White pride was a political hand grenade.

“What the time of Trump does for us now is make White Americans visible as raced Americans, as raced counterparts to Black Americans. Long-standing assumptions — that only non-Whites have racial identities, that White Americans are individuals who only have race if they’re Nazis or White nationalists — those assumptions no longer hold,” Painter writes in an essay from 2018. “I’m turning the glass around to focus on what living in a slave society did to non-Black Americans and to the society as a whole.”

Painter puts muscle and heart into history so that her readers can easily, but thoughtfully, draw the lines between past and present. Her history is inclusive, not in a pandering or self-consciously correct way, but because her artful telling of it is full of complexity that’s both beautiful and bracing.

“Once we can write the words ‘trauma’ and ‘slavery’ in the same sentence, we will have enriched our understanding of slavery’s human costs, for enslaved, enslavers, and bystanders,” she writes.

In her memoir, Painter offers an intellectual history of herself, but also a history of us. We’re lucky that she continues to talk. What she has to say can help us more fully understand ourselves — but only if we’re willing to listen.

I Just Keep Talking

A Life in Essays

By Nell Irvin Painter

Doubleday. 418 pp. $35

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