Ras - How to Write a Review: 2015 Study Guide

The Lexusadvertisementappealstoa personashighclass expensive car that will bring you happinessand futuristic technology. The ad I choose brings high emotions of desire and need.

Language is a form of symbolic action: it gets things done in the world, acting onpeople and situations. Language is a kind of rhetorical praxis that aims to both inform andpersuade.

All language is a kind of argument. We use language to create identification between us and our audience. Even an images can serve as argument.

We often have a tough time understandingargument as anything but disagreement or fight, and instead of accepting the word as meaning making a point or reasoned inquiry.

Another important lesson in this chapter is that rhetorical situations vary widely, ranging from the persuasive, such as the argument that only a small percentage of the populationshould serve in the military. Understanding how arguments can change depends on thecontext, and trying to understand the contextsthemselves can be very challenging.

Emotional appeal is often accomplished in amultitude of ways: by storytelling, or ametaphor, or by passion in the delivery of the speech or writing.

In Aristotle's Rhetoric, he identifies three artistic modes of persuasion, one of which was awakening emotion (pathos) in theaudience so as to induce them to make the judgment desired.

Pathos represents an appeal to the audience'semotions. It is a communication technique. It is used most often in rhetoric (where it is oneof the three modes of persuasion, alongsideethos and logos), and in literature, film and other narrative art.

Aristotle posits that, alongside pathos, the speaker must deploy good ethos in order to establish credibility.

The modes of persuasion, often referred to asrhetorical strategies, or rhetorical appeals, are devices in rhetoric that classify the speaker's appeal to the audience. They are: ethos, pathos, and logos.

Ethos is an appeal to the credibility of thepresenter. It is how well the presenterconvinces the audience that he or she isqualified to present (speak) on the particularsubject. It can be done in many ways:

By being a notable figure in the field in question, such as a college professor or an executive of a company whosebusiness is related to the presenter's topic.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. Persuasionis achieved by the speaker's character whenthe speech is so spoken as to make us think him/her credible. Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speechstirs their emotions. Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Logos is logical appeal or the simulation of it, and the terms logic, facts, statisticsreal numbers, evidence, and real facts are derived from it. So logos is used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's claims or thesis. Having a logos appeal also enhances ethos because information makes the speaker look knowledgeable and prepared to his orher audience. However, the data can beconfusing and thus can confuse the audience.

Logos can also be misleading, or inaccurate, however meaningful it may seem to thesubject at hand. Inaccurate, falsified, or miscontextualized data can even be used to enact a pathos effect.