Aristotle, born in 384 B.C., described that rhetoric is effective by three means. These means are what he referred to as ethos, logos, and pathos. These three components help persuade people using three different means. Often, we hear or see these persuasion techniques used in everyday life, whether it be through an article we read or a commercial we see.
“Ethos” can be defined as trying to persuade, using your reputation to your advantage. An example of this would be in this commercial for Macs.
In this commercial, we see Macintosh using their reputation of not getting virus’, as an advantage over a PC. They are using their reputation to sell their product. This is just one of the three possible ways to persuade people. We often see this technique being used when you hear the line, “The truck you can trust,” in a Ford commercial, or “The batteries doctors depend on,” in a Duracell commercial.
Aside from ethos, we also have what is called “logos,” which is persuasion based on good reasoning. As I learned from www.rpi.edu, this technique is often used in research documents, where one tries to prove a point, by offering legitimate reasoning or logic. Logos can also be seen in the Macintosh example I used. Mac is trying to persuade us that it’s logical to buy a Mac, because it won’t get virus’ like a PC will. They are trying to use logical persuasion.
The third type is called “Pathos,” which focuses on an emotional aspect to try and persuade. An example of when this would be used would be in a Pro-Life message. They would try to sway your opinion by adding in an emotional factor, by convincing you that having an abortion is morally wrong, and that a fetus is indeed a living creature.
Aristotle’s rhetoric has been being used for over 2000 years, and his concepts still currently apply to modern day persuasion.
Most of my information came from http://www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/webclass/web/project1/group4/
