Ethos, Pathos, Pathos And Logos

Aristotle defined rhetoric as "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion" (American Rhetoric). Numerous rhetoric principals were utilized in the research presented by the students in English 287. In this review I will categorize the presentation by the way the presenter attempted to persuade the audience to agree with their argument. The rhetorical triangle will be used to classify if an element of a presentation applied to the pathos, ethos, or logos side of the triangle. In Greek logos means “word” or “reason”, in rhetoric logos appeals to reason, logos is the first corner of the triangle that I will be discussing. In Barnet and Bedau’s book entitled “Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing:

In Greek pathos means feeling, the appeal to emotions is considered appealing to pathos (Barnet 74). Many presenters has a small element of their presentation that appealed to pathos, nonetheless only a few utilized this element effectively. The first presentation that effectively appealed to pathos was the presentation done by Bear that discussed issues that are currently taking place on the Ganges River. The images that he presented depicted the extreme pollution conditions that the people and wildlife in the region are forced to live in. These pictures were very effective at appealing to pathos. The second presentation that successfully appealed to pathos was the presentation on physician assisted death presented by Lokella. The issue she discussed was very controversial, however everyone could relate to the emotion of having someone suffer from a terminal illness. Lokella increased the effectiveness of her argument and her appeal to pathos by recounting the story of a young woman named Brittany Maynard. Her story stated how this young woman decided to end her life utilizing the physician assisted death program due to her suffering from terminal brain cancer. This story hit an emotional cord not only with Lokella, but with many who were listening to her presentation, including myself. The final presentation that efficiently appealed to pathos was done by Kaitlyn with her presentation entitled “Child Marriage in India”. The information she presented could arguably have appealed to logos as well, however viewing images of girls that looked like they were barely 10 years old marrying 20-30 year old men, and hearing the stats of how many of these girls were raped and abused, rendered this argument as a influential appeal to