October Blog Post

Stasia Newton

Professor Christina Ivey

Comm 160

Date: 11/1/18

October Blog Post

A topic I thought was very important that we learned about this month was the three rhetorical proofs, ethos, logos, and pathos. They are essential to rhetoric, argument, and basically any conversation. Ethos is the ethics, credibility, character, and charisma a person has and displays. Logos means logic or proof it’s a way to persuade a person or people with logical communication, or proof, and information. Finally pathos means emotions or affect. A person uses pathos to convince a person with an emotional argument that affects the other person or peoples emotions. People use a combination of the three rhetorical proofs everyday.

An example of ethos in the world could be toothpaste, or gum commercials. In many commercials they will conclude with a statement about how 9/10 or 4/5 dentists say this one is the best. They are trying to prove it’s the best by using the recommendation of a credible source. This use of ethos with proving credibility has probably convinced people to try a new brand of toothpaste or type of gum. An example of logos would be debate tournaments. Individuals try to use logic and facts in order to prove that they’re correct or the other side is wrong. Logos is also used for most academic papers because people rely of facts in logic in order to inform others about various academic topics. Pathos examples are prevalent in pretty much every conversation. An example would be a confession of love when trying to convince someone to date them. It might not be rational or make sense but feelings hardly ever do. And that emotional argument would most likely convince someone.

Therefore, I truly think that the three rhetorical proofs have been one of the most important topics we’ve learned about this month. They are prevalent in every conversation and discussion. People use them separately and combined everyday to communicate with each other.