Rhetorical Appeal Types (Rhetor Strategies)

Appeals Types

• Strategies the rhetor is using to make the persuasion work
• Is the rhetor aiming for your head, your heart, or both?
• Most argument types can employ several different types of appeals
• This is often one of the most important elements to notice

The Big Three appeals types

• Pathos (Emotions)
• Ethos (Credibility)
• Logos (Logic)

Two more:

• Mythos (shared values)
• Kairos (timing/opportunity)

Pathos appeals

- Generate feelings that the rhetor hopes will lead audience to accept a claim or action

- Often disguised as others sorts of appeals

Ethos appeals: Use of credibility

Credibility focus

• Similar in many ways to establishing a brand identity (though usually done much more quickly)
• Speaker seeks (through a variety of methods) to generate specific feelings which lead audience to conclude the rhetor can and should be believed

- Implies trustworthiness, fairness, respect, shared values, authority, etc.
- Note how most of these values are audience-dependent
- How do you decide whether or not to believe someone?

Logos-type appeals

- Use of reason and evidence to persuade
-What counts as good evidence and good reasoning varies across cultures & time periods

Formal deductive reasoning

• Begins with a general statement, links a specific case, then concludes about the specific case based on this linkage :
• All men are mortal.
• Socrates is a man.
• Socrates is mortal.

Formal inductive reasoning

• Begins with specific cases, asserts that totality of cases are similar, then concludes that a generalization is probable based on the evidence :
• Daisies are pretty.
• Roses are pretty.
• Therefore flowers must be pretty.

Remember:

• Following formal logic does not by itself make the argument correct
• Individual assertions can be untrue, and links between assertions and conclusion can be incorrect or inadequate
• Many clever (and not-so-clever) rhetors will use logic support a questionable conclusion

More types of logic

• “Informal logic:” relies on unstated habits of mind or shared assumptions
• Degree : More of a good is good; less of a bad is good
• Analogy : Explaining one concept or situation by comparing it to another
• Precedent : Assertion based on a past occurrence