31 Appeals to Ethos, Logos, and Pathos and Logical Fallacies
31 Appeals to Ethos, Logos, and Pathos and Logical Fallacies
Core Curriculum and Christina Frasier
Learning Objectives
- Identify different approaches and categories of argumentation.
- Understand errors in reasoning and how to avoid them in academic writing.
Appeals to Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
As a reader and a listener, it is fundamental that you be able to recognize how writers and speakers depend upon ethos, logos, and pathos in their efforts to communicate. As a communicator yourself, you will benefit from being able to see how others rely upon ethos, logos, and pathos so that you can apply what you learn from your observations to your own speaking and writing. We will explore appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos by answering the following questions.
- How do I evaluate an appeal to ethos?
- How do I recognize when an appeal to ethos is manipulative?
- What fallacies misuse appeals to ethos?
- How do I evaluate an appeal to logos?
- How do I recognize when an appeal to logos is manipulative?
- What fallacies misuse appeals to logos?
- How do I evaluate an appeal to pathos?
- How do I recognize when an appeal to pathos is manipulative?
- What fallacies misuse appeals to pathos?
- Under what contexts are fallacies committed?
- Where can I find more information about fallacies of ethos, logos, and pathos?
1. How do I evaluate an appeal to ethos?
When you evaluate an appeal to ethos, you examine how successfully a speaker or writer establishes authority or credibility with her intended audience. You are asking yourself what elements of the essay or speech would cause an audience to feel that the author is (or is not) trustworthy and credible.
A good speaker or writer leads the audience to feel comfortable with her knowledge of a topic. The audience sees her as someone worth listening to—a clear or insightful thinker, or at least someone who is well-informed and genuinely interested in the topic.
Some of the questions you can ask yourself as you evaluate an author’s ethos may include the following:
- Has the writer or speaker cited her sources or in some way made it possible for the audience to access further information on the issue?
- Does she demonstrate familiarity with different opinions and perspectives?
- Does she provide complete and accurate information about the issue?
- Does she use the evidence fairly? Does she avoid selective use of evidence or other types of manipulation of data?
- Does she speak respectfully about people who may have opinions and perspectives different from her own?
- Does she use unbiased language?
- Does she avoid excessive reliance on emotional appeals?
- Does she accurately convey the positions of people with whom she disagrees?
- Does she acknowledge that an issue may be complex or multifaceted?
- Does her education or experience give her credibility as someone who should be listened to on this issue?
Some of the above questions may strike you as relevant to an evaluation of logos as well as ethos—questions abo