Rhetoric: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos - Prof. M. Applin, Study notes of Communication and Presentation Skills

Download Rhetoric: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos - Prof. M. Applin and more Study notes Communication and Presentation Skills in PDF only on Docsity! Chapter 6: Ethos Ethos: Greek for “character”; the capacity to influence an audience based on audience’s perceptions of the credibility and character of the speaker n relationship to their own interests and values. Inherited ethos: the actual reputation that a rhetor “carries with them” because of an audience’s acquaintance with past behavior Persona: rhetorical creation; constructed ethos that a rhetor creates of him or herself within the confines of a particular rhetorical text; always tied to a specific discourse. Personal stories: narrations of one’s life experience that provide insight into the speaker’s character. Form of delivery: reveals character, by using phrases, words, accents, or gestures commonly associated with certain “types” of person. Four recurring personae:  Apologist: employed when the speakers wish to rebuff attack by appearing the virtuous victim of an unjust action  Agent: speaks on behalf of some institution as a spokesperson of legitimate authority; allows them to speak “for others,” thus allowing them to “stand up’ to opposition in the name of a community.  Partisan: one who represents not a group or institution but an ideology or ideal; tends to thrive in heated debates in times of turmoil and upheaval, when people are looking for new directions based on new ideas.  Hero: defined by his or her personal character, particularly as it relates courage, commitment to action, and a romantic attachment to a vague but inspiring future; may not have a coherent political vision or a workable idea, but make up for these limitations by boldly striding into the unknown against all obstacles in the optimistic faith that things will work out in the end. Evoked Audience: attractive image that the rhetor constructs of and for the audience in order to encourage them to act according to that image; partly fictional identity that usually oversimplifies the actual diversity and character of people listening to a speech; often what a rhetor WANTS an audience to be rather than what they ARE. Identification: the strategy of creating a common bond with an audience by drawing parallels between the characteristics of speaker and audience.  Persona of rhetor is aligned with the evoked audience. Distinction: the attempt to establish credibility by the possession of special knowledge (the kind of knowledge one receives by learning technical discourses and procedures, such as the knowledge one receives from attending university) and/or unique experience that are superior to the audience.  Persona of the rhetor stands apart from the evoked audience Polarization: the strategy of dividing an audience into a positive “us” and a negative “them” in order to create unity through difference. Diatribe: a speech whose only function is to provoke an audience to self-reflection by directly attacking and ridiculing its most valorized conventions, values, attitudes, and beliefs. Chapter 7: Logos Logos: refers to the use of rational arguments and evidence to persuade an audience of the reasonableness of one’s position; based on the belief that human beings are rational with the potential to make decisions based on logic, principles, and evidence. Logistical Reasoning: the use of inferences and profess to establish relationships between propositions which warrant specific conclusions. Reasoning consists primarily of the relationship between three things:  Claim: the primary position or conclusion being advanced by a speaker.  Grounds: the supporting evidence for the claim.  Warrant: the inferential leap that connects the Claim with the Ground, usually embodied in a principle, provision, or chain of reasoning; usually left unstated in the assumption the audience can “fill in it” for themselves by drawing from such resources as social judgment, public opinion, convention, values, beliefs or attitudes. o Backing: a reason used to justify the Warrant. o Rebuttal: acknowledges the conditions where the Claim may not hold. o Qualification: admits to the degree of certainty or confidence that the speaker has in the Claim. Generalization: warrants drawing a general conclusion about a class of people, events, objects, or processes based on specific examples drawn from experience. Analogy: warrants the comparison of two things that might not otherwise go together for the purposes of drawing a conclusion based on their sharing a similarity. Sign: warrants the diagnosis of some underlying condition based on the appearance of external clues or indicators; similar to generalization insofar as it draws a general conclusion based on the analysis of particular things. Causation: warrants a practical conclusion based on the likely effects brought about by some underlying cause; “if-then” statements. Principle: warrants judging the character of some particular object, event, or process based on a universal belief or definition. Chapter 9: Style Style: a sense of aesthetic wholeness that carries with it a clear and powerful meaning; is present when all of a speech’s parts form together into a concrete whole in such a way that is fitting with the occasion and which carries an audience from expectation to fulfillment during the course of the delivery.  As Figure: is associated with the particularly eloquent turns of phrase, examples, or visualizations.  As Form: is associated with the entire feel of the speech experienced as a unified work of art. Meaning: stand in a functional and/or referential relationship to other things.  Rhetorical meaning: thus represents how words, gestures, and actions acquire practical significance through the interaction of symbolic and situational contexts.  Denotative meaning: the “literal” reference of a word that is most universally associated with its contextual use.  Connotative meaning: the emotional judgment of attraction or repulsion that is associated with the denoted object, event, process, concept, action or person  Associative meaning: the spectrum of secondary denotative and connotative meanings that an audience associates with the primary object of reference.  Practical meaning: the actual effect brought about by one’s choice of language. Concrete Words: words that refer to specific and readily-identifiable qualities or actions in order to give an audience a more vivid experience of some thing or event. Example: a brief narrative or description that demonstrates the meaning of an idea through a specific case.  Actual examples: descriptions of real things that exist or have existed, that happen or have happened.  Fictional examples: descriptions of events that are only imagined to have happened in the past, present or future. o Third person: fictional examples describe the actions of other people as if they actually happened until usually revealing at the end that it is just a story. o Second person: fictional example which places the audience in a hypothetical situation that asks an audience to envision doing something. Metaphor: defines one thing by directly comparing it to something seemingly unrelated in order to imply that they share some essential underlying quality. The meaning of a metaphor grows out of the interaction between the tenor and the vehicle.  Tenor: the underlying message or principle idea that is intended to be conveyed.  Vehicle: how the tenor is embodied and expressed in a specific figure.  Meaning: the interaction between the tenor and the vehicle. Simile: highlight a specific quality of a thing by explicitly comparing it to a like quality in something unrelated. Rhythm: in rhetoric is to compose words that, when spoken and heard, follow some kind of musical pattern that tends to build toward a conclusion. Alliteration: the use of words that begin with the same consonant sound. Repetition: the repeated use of a key phrase to begin a series of sentences whose endings vary. Parallelism: the repeated pairing of different, usually opposing, ideas in a rhythmic “couplet” within the same sentence. Antithesis: when two or more similarly phrased, but contradictory, ideas are consecutively expressed in order to favor one over the other.