Methods of Persuasion: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

1. Chapter 17 Methods of Persuasion

2. Methods of Persuasion: Introduction • To influence your audience’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors, you should focus on three persuasive tools in your presentation: • Ethos (establishing credibility as a speaker) • Logos (presenting sound reasoning behind your claims) • Pathos (using emotional appeals)

3. Methods of Persuasion:An Overview • In this chapter we explore ethos, logos, and pathos in more detail. • This chapter also features three sample speeches, each demonstrating one of these strategies.

4. Ethos: Your Credibility as a Speaker • Credible and moral speakers win audience trust, as they are seen as: • Knowledgeable • Honest • Genuinely interested in doing the right thing

5. Ethos: Understanding the Elements of Credibility • Components of ethos include: • Competence • practicalwisdom derived from knowledge and experience with topic • Trustworthiness • virtue characterized by being honest and fair • Goodwill toward the audience • illustrated by empathizing with members’ views and putting their needs, feelings, and concerns first

6. Ethos: Understanding the Elements of Credibility

7. Ethos: Building Your Credibility • Share you qualifications to speak on the topic. • Present strong evidence from reputable sources. • Highlight common ground with the audience. • Choose your words carefully. • Show respect for conflicting opinions. • Practice your speech until your delivery is fluent.

8. Ethos: Building Your Credibility

9. Ethos: Avoiding Loss of Your Credibility • Get your facts right. • Factual errors diminish your competence. • Pronounce words correctly. • Incorrect pronunciation undermines your experience. • Acknowledge potential conflicts of interest. • Omitting information makes you seem unethical. • Avoid stretching to find a connection with the audience. • Awkward use of slang, language, information sounds unnatural.

10. Tips for Credibility • Tip: Show respect to your audience even when they disagree with you. Your presentation’s strong evidence, clear organization, and effective delivery will demonstrate your competence, goodwill, and trustworthiness. • Tip: Once you lose your credibility it is very difficult to repair.

11. Logos: The Evidence and Reasoning Behind Your Message • Logos: Effective use of facts to back your claims and clearly show how those facts have led you to those claims • Includes use of evidence, or proof, of your claim • Avoids fallacious (faulty) reasoning that twists or distorts the facts in your favor

12. Logos: The Evidence and Reasoning Behind Your Message

13. Logos: Using Evidence • Identify your sources and their qualifications. • Give listeners new evidence to increase their perception of your credibility. • Provide precise evidence.

14. Logos: Using Evidence • Look for compelling evidence. • Use concrete or detailed examples. • Help audiences visualize your points and engage their senses.

15. Logos: Using Evidence

16. Logos: Using Evidence • Characterize your evidence accurately by carefully wording your claims.

17. Logos: Using Reasoning • Inductive reasoning: • Generalize from facts, instances, or examples to make a claim.

18. Logos: Using Reasoning • Four types of inductive reasoning include: • Example reasoning • Comparison reasoning • Sign reasoning • Causal reasoning

19. Logos: Using Reasoning • Example reasoning: usingspecific instances to support a claim • Choose many examples. • Choose representative examples. • Consider potential counterexamples.

20. Example Reasoning

21. Logos: Using Reasoning • Comparison reasoning: arguing that two instances are comparable, so that what is true for one is likely to be true for another

22. Logos: Using Reasoning • Sign reasoning: arguingthat something is true based on indirect indicators (signs)

23. Logos: Using Reasoning • Causal reasoning: arguing that one event has caused another • Explain link between cause and effect. • Support link with credible evidence. • Show a correlation between cause and effect.

24. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Faulty reasoning means the link between your claim and your supporting material is weak. • Examples of logical fallacies include: • Hasty generalization • Post hoc • Reversed causality • Ad populum (bandwagon) • Straw person • Slippery slope • False dilemma • Appeal to tradition

25. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Hasty generalizations: Speaker bases a conclusion on limited or unrepresentative examples. • Causal reasoning errors include: • Post hoc fallacy: Because one event followed another, the first event caused the second. • Reversed causality: Speakers miss the fact that the effect is actually the cause.

26. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies

27. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Ad populum fallacy: Assuming a statement is true just because many people believe that it is • Also called the bandwagon fallacy • Straw person fallacy: Replacing your opponent’s real claim with a weaker claim you can more easily rebut

28. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Slippery slope fallacy: Believingthat one event or policy will tip us over an edge into a huge disaster

29. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Falsedilemma fallacy: Arguingthat only two solutions are possible, and that only one of those choices (the speaker’s solution) is correct.

30. Logos: Avoiding Logical Fallacies • Appeal to tradition fallacy: Arguingthat an idea or policy is good because people have accepted or followed it for a long time.

31. Tips for Using Logos • Tip: Be sure to stay audience-centered. Use evidence that your audience will find credible. • Tip: Try to use evidence that is novel or fresh to the audience. This will help keep them interested.

32. Pathos: Evoking Your Listeners’ Emotions • Appealing to your audience’s emotions (pathos) puts a human face on the problem that your speech is addressing, and can be a big motivator.

33. Pathos: Using Emotional Appeals • Use sound reasoning and concrete details to make a logical connection between your point and the emotions you are evoking.

34. Pathos: Using Emotional Appeals • Avoid using hasty generalizations or unethical appeals to stimulate listeners’ emotions. • Consider using a fear appeal in which your argument presents a serious threat that audience members believe they have the power to remedy.

35. Pathos: Using Emotional Appeals

36. Ensuring Ethical Use of Pathos • Do not use emotional appeals to manipulate the audience. • Make your appeal logical and ethical by creating a sound connection between your point and the emotion. • Avoid unethical fear appeals, which are premised on false evidence. • Avoid the loaded language fallacy, or using emotionally charged words to convey meaning that is unsupported by the facts.

37. Ensuring Ethical Use of Pathos

38. Tips for Using Pathos • Tip: Try to elicit a variety of emotions. For example, you can stimulate anger, pity, and empathy with a single example of pet abuse. • Tip: If you use a fear appeal, be sure you provide your audience with a way to prevent the problem.

39. Sample Speech: Anna Martinez, “Extra Credit You Can Live Without” • Read the sample speech on pages 572–77. • The speech’s three main points deal with: • Problems created by students’ credit card debt • Causes of the problems • Steps to becoming a more careful credit card consumer

40. Sample Speech: Sue Suter, “Women with Disabilities: How to Become a Boat Rocker in Life” • Read the sample speech on pages 577–85. • The speech’s five main points are: • Disability and gender together create an even more oppressive existence for women with disabilities. • People with disabilities are ordinary people. • “Cliff jumping” can help empower people and free them from labels. • People with disabilities need role models. • By taking action, the audience, as well as people with disabilities in general, can make a difference.

41. Sample Speech: President Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate” • Read the sample speech on pages 585–90. • The speech’s four main points are: • The Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall represent oppression and totalitarianism. • Countries that embraced Communism after WWII have struggled to thrive, while those that embraced free government and trade have thrived. • Tearing down the Berlin Wall would be a sound step toward a more free and open world. • The United States pledges to aid Western Europe; the transformative power of freedom will prevail.