5 Understanding the Means of Persuasion
Melissa Elston
Learning Objectives:
- Identify some basic rhetorical methods and strategies an author may use to make an argument
- Recognize how these strategies overlap with elements of communication
The last chapter mentioned something called the “means of persuasion.” Here, you can explore some of the basics of Aristotelian theory, as well as how they compare to our more modern understandings of communication and argument.
An Early Model: The Rhetorical Triangle
Aristotle was a thinker who lived in the 300s B.C.E. — before the common Era — in ancient Greece. He wrote treatises on subjects ranging from math to biology to politics to poetry, but what we remember him for in writing and communication studies is his contribution to the field of rhetoric.
Aristotle was interested in audiences. More specifically, he wanted to know how they could be analyzed, approached, and hopefully persuaded to see things from a speaker’s point of view. After some reflection, he theorized three main ways in which people can be persuaded, and this model, which we will call the rhetorical triangle (or second rhetorical triangle), is still widely used in the West today.
The first way Aristotle suggested audiences can be moved is through logos. Logos is commonly understood as logic — or at least, the simulation of logic. Here is the tricky thing about logos: It simply means reasoning. In Aristotle’s model, reasoning doesn’t have to be correct to work on audiences; it only has to sound like it is or could be correct. When you go to write papers, most professors expect to see sound reasoning backed by facts and data. But any rhetorical study of political speeches, advertisements, and the like will demonstrate that speakers and writers can use faulty reasoning, or numbers and data out of context, and still persuade audiences. This is something that you should be aware of, as you move through the world.
The second way Aristotle suggested audiences can be moved is through pathos, which we typically define as an emotional appeal. These, too, play a role in decision making. Fear, love, hatred, sadness, even boredom can all drive human behavior. In Aristotle’s formulation, reading an audience’s mood or emotional state and appealing directly to it — or attempting to shift or create alternate emotions — can make a speaker or writer more effective. A speaker or writer can even sometimes override logos (or convince folks that faulty logos is stronger than it is) if they work on the audience’s emotions.
The third way audiences can be moved, in Aristotle’s model, is something called ethos. English speakers often imagine that the word ethos means “ethics,” but this is a false cognate. What Aristotle actually was describing is reputation: an audience’s impression of the person writing or speaking to them. Ethos can certainly stem from a person’s perceived character. (This is the closest approximation in English of Aristotle’s terminology here!)