Ethos, Pathos & Logos

What are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos?

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are techniques of persuasion that form the rhetorical triangle. A compelling argument, sales pitch, speech, or commercial uses elements of these 3 strategies.

Ethos

Ethos is used as a means of convincing the audience or by using reliability, honesty, and credibility. The Greek philosopher Aristotle outlined Ethos as one of the main 3 keys to persuasion.

What is Ethos?  Ethos is the persuasive technique that appeals to an audience by highlighting credibility. Ethos advertisement techniques invoke the superior “character” of a speaker. 

Click Here ->Add using Ethos

This ad uses Ethos by displaying the superstar Athlete Kyrie Irving and his new shoe, Ethos is used as there is a superior character and it highlights Kyrie's skill and credibility in the shoe.

Pathos

Pathos's main goal is to convince the audience emotionally, this can mean making you happy and joyful or sad and depressed. This is because it wants to elicit pity or energy as it appeals to compassion and feeling.

What is Pathos?

Pathos is a persuasive technique that is used to convince the audience through emotion. Pathos advertisement techniques invoke the sense of memory, nostalgia, and or shared experience. 

Click Here ->Add using Pathos

This ad demonstrates Pathos by using sympathy,  we feel sympathetic towards the children as we have things that the children do not have which in this case is food. We also feel sorry for them because they are in bad shape.

Logos

Logos main goal is to get you to use common sense and think, this is to make you see the logicality in the decision you are making and how it benefits you.

What is logos? 

Logos is a persuasive technique that aims to convince an audience by using logic and reason. Also called “the logical appeal,” logos examples in advertisements are usually data graphs and statistics. 

Click Here -> Ad using Logos

This ad demonstrates the use of logos by letting us see the battery drain through the hours, this is logos as it gives us a physical demonstration of the battery life and how long it lasts. 

Questions

1. What are we doing? We are learning about the key persuasive techniques Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

2. Why are we doing it? We are doing this to develop and understand the key techniques, this is because learning this will enhance our ability to write persuasive formal pieces.