Aristotle's Appeals: Ethos, Pathos, Logos

Below are some ways of looking at your thesis and topic sentence claims as you write them. Are you writing a claim with the intention of using one or more of the appeals within your idea? If not, try to use ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos to make your pleas to your audience.

Ethos (ethics/people)

• Making an appeal using one's own credibility/character
• Using things about yourself (personal history, age, race, religion) to make an argument

How to attempt:

• Describe what you think are moral or positive characteristics and actions of a person/group of people if you want to show their goodness or authority.

• Describe immoral actions and negative characteristics and actions of a person/group of people if you want to put them in a 'bad light' or have them lose authority.

Pathos (apathy/empathy/sympathy/feelings)

• Making an appeal to the readers' emotions. 

How to attempt:

• Use language that is used within that emotion's atmosphere. 

• Pose questions that illicit an emotion.

• Huge generalizations and huge consequences. 
• Make sure something or someone is impacted by somebody else's actions, but make sure that you specify who each someone is!

Logos (logic/facts)

• Making an appeal using your logic, your reasoning skills.

How to attempt:

• Cite facts. Basic facts of life that can found anywhere, or specific facts that give a view of the situation. 
• Explain what your facts mean. Interpret them for your audience. Never let a fact speak for itself! Facts can be distorted into different truths.

Kairos

• Using time and setting to give context to your argument! What's going on in the world, recently, currently, historically, that supports your points?

How to attempt:

• Talk about an event and its known impacts...
• or, talk about an event and what the results could be if the world doesn't act (and act the way you urge them to!).

***Many times, we mix and match our appeals, and that is fine and dandy. It's most important that you are very conscious about trying to appeal to your audience, thinking of your audience and using language to affect them. 

Revising Your Outline's Thesis and Subtopics

• Use these strategies to reword/rework your current ideas (P) in your sketch outline/first draft. Also, these four appeals can inspire some bullet points points for reasons (R) and examples (E) to expand the outline/draft.

• For your main sentences that give the idea, make sure they have some kind of appeal (or a mix of them) within the claim. If there is nothing arguable about your thesis or topic sentences, you need to reword so that they become more argumentative!

• Since your sketch outline didn't ask you to focus on including your reasons or examples, now is the chance to think about where you may go with ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos within each argumentative point...