In high school, the ELA Common Core State Standards require students to develop formal writing skills, creating essays and arguments that are well-thought-out and syntactically varied. They also require students to effectively use persuasive writing strategies to defend a claim or point of view.
A great way to enhance students' understanding of effective arguments is to teach the Aristotelian concepts of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. This requires a basic working knowledge of rhetoric. A key to strong persuasive writing is the ability to dissect and validate, or debunk, the rhetoric of other arguments.
Ethos refers to the credibility of a speaker or writer. It establishes trust and authority on a particular topic. The definition of ethos focuses on character, expertise, reliability, and reputation. When a speaker utilizes ethos, they demonstrate their qualifications, morals, and knowledge to influence an audience.
For example, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech exemplifies strong ethos. As an influential civil rights activist, MLK established his reputation and character. His credibility compelled audiences nationwide to support the civil rights movement. MLK highlighted his educated background and referred to respected documents like the Constitution to showcase his expertise on racial injustice. This enhanced his ethical appeal.
Ethos appeals to:
Pathos evokes emotion in an audience to persuade them. The pathos definition involves appealing to sympathies, imagination, and personal connections. Pathos sways an audience by targeting desires, biases, and motivations. Instead of relying solely on statistics, pathos utilizes vivid language, imagery, and metaphors.
In literature, Charles Dickens leveraged pathos effectively in his novels. For example, Oliver Twist depicts the appalling conditions of orphanages and child labor. Dickens magnified feelings of outrage and empathy through emotive descriptions of Oliver's miserable circumstances. This made the public determined to correct social injustices impacting children.
Pathos appeals to:
Logos utilizes facts, data, and logical reasoning to construct a persuasive argument. The logos definition focuses on credibility rooted in rationality rather than emotion. Logos establishes an argument as logical and sound through citing evidence, testimonies, and statistics, and providing context. Unlike pathos, logos avoids sentimentality in favor of objective explanations.
For instance, a scientific paper delivers logos by presenting methodical research and empirical evidence. The paper avoids unverified assumptions or subjective viewpoints. Through precise language and factual details, the author systematically supports their hypothesis with logical analysis of experiments and results. This logos strengthens the paper's central thesis.
Logos utilizes:
The successful implementation of ethos, pathos, and logos in writing or speech depends on the effectiveness of different rhetorical strategies. There are many different rhetorical strategies (and rhetorical fallacies!) that can strengthen or weaken an argument. A few of the more familiar strategies to students include:
| Rhetorical Questions | encourages audience to think about an obvious answer |
| Analogy | establishes a more familiar concept to explain a more complicated or remote subject |
| Rebuttal | disproves or refuses an assertion |
| Antithesis | uses strongly contrasting words, images, or ideas |
| Parallelism | repeats a grammatical structure to emphasize an important idea |
| Repetition | repeats a specific word or phrase to ensure that the audience pays attention |
| Loaded Words | uses the connotations of words to play on the audience’s emotions |
| Restatement | expresses the same idea but in different words to clarify or emphasize |
| Understatement or Overstatement | use to be ironic, call attention to an idea, or to emphasize an idea through exaggeration |
By recognizing the tactics of a persuasive argument, students learn to use it themselves and recognize these tactics in daily life. One excellent way to teach and review the concepts of ethos, pathos, and pathos is through a storyboard.
In the following example storyboard, each concept is briefly explained and then shown in action. When students create a definition or example board like this, classroom concepts are reinforced, and students have the chance to demonstrate them creatively.
By incorporating the visual elements of a storyboard as well as text, even students who struggle creating organized written thoughts can demonstrate mastery of the subject. Additionally, teachers can immediately see and respond to inaccuracies, allowing them to use class time to assess and correct, rather than handing back graded work a day or two later.
Check out these ethos, pathos, logos activities from our guides on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, and "Letter from Birmingham Jail".
The Rhetorical Triangle is a framework developed by Aristotle to analyze the elements of persuasive writing and speaking. It consists of three key elements: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos refers to the credibility of the speaker or writer, Pathos appeals to emotions, and Logos appeals to logic.
Understanding the Rhetorical Triangle is essential for effective communication, particularly in persuasive writing and speaking. By analyzing the use of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in an argument, one can identify the strengths and weaknesses of the argument and ultimately develop stronger persuasive writing and speaking skills.
The Rhetorical Triangle can be applied in the classroom to teach students how to develop persuasive writing and speaking skills. Teachers can introduce students to the concepts of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos and provide examples of each. Students can then practice identifying these elements in various texts and speeches and apply them in their own writing and speaking.