J.K. Rowling "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Ethos and Pathos

Aristotle lists and defines three important rhetorical tools that can be used to persuade an audience to think, act, or feel a certain way—ethos, pathos, and logos. Most basically defined, ethos is a speaker or writer establishing his or her own credibility. This technique is often employed to initially gain an audience’s attention and trust; the audience is convinced that the speaker or writer is competent, well-informed about the topic, and trustworthy. Likewise, pathos encourages and persuades audiences to act because they are being appealed to at an emotional level. Often, speakers or writers will use specific stories, anecdotes, or provocative language to move the audience to feel a certain way. Finally, logos is a rhetorical technique that appeals to an audience through logic; an argument is presented and then expounded upon in a logical progression that leaves the audience convinced of its authenticity. These three rhetorical tools are often used simultaneously in an attempt to gain the trust of the audience while at the same time moving them to connect both emotionally and intellectually with the subject. For my purposes today, I’m going to focus on the usage of ethos and pathos.

Ethos:

Ethos is defined “in classical rhetoric, [as] a persuasive appeal based on the character or projected character of the speaker or writer.” Speakers and writers often begin to persuade an audience by trying to gain trust through establishing their credibility. With the exponential rise of digital media—whether in formal advertising or informal social media—the establishment of credibility and trustworthiness has become almost entirely founded upon prevalence in an online forum. Something or someone is trustworthy if it can be Googled; a topic is only legitimate if it has an article on Wikipedia; a person only exists if he or she has a Facebook or a Twitter account; products and brands are deemed worth buying because we were told so by an add on a website. In order for speakers and writers to employ the use of ethos in order to gain credibility in the digital age, they often refer back to an online article they read or a video they watched or an advertisement they saw. 

For example, in this video by the End It Movement, an organization that seeks to raise awareness and funds to end modern day slavery, the video attempts to gain credibility by using trustworthy and recognizable websites like the Google search engine and what looks like Google maps. The video focuses a lot on searching on the internet for the information that they are providing. The makers of the video are virtually shouting at their audience, saying, “It’s real; we promise! Pull out your iPhones and Google it!” They show that people have posted on Facebook and Tweeted about the issue, and they show that videos can be found about the issue on YouTube. They even go far as to prompt the audience at the end of the video, saying, “SHARE THIS VIDEO.” The heavy emphasis on an online presence makes the video appear more trustworthy and more credible. The makers of the video also use other methods to establish their credibility such as historical information about the slave trade to establish credibility by comparing the number of people enslaved in the world today to the number of slaves that are believed to have existed throughout history and important historical and political figures to emphasize that slavery is still prevalent in the world today. They have images of Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and protestors fighting for freedom and rights, and they play sound bites of both President Obama and Nelson Mandela. All of these attempts work together to prove to the audience that the End It Movement is a legitimate and trustworthy cause.

And just in case this video didn’t convince you, here are some trustworthy celebs that say End It’s for real:

Nick Cannon
Trevor Bane
and Matt Hasselbeck

Pathos:

Pathos is defined as “an appeal to an audience’s emotions.” Pathos can be employed through several techniques—a speaker or writer can use extremely powerful language, compelling stories or anecdotes, a particular tone, and even simple things like body language, dramatic pauses, and facial expressions to impart an emotional attachment to his or her topic. An emotional appeal to an audience through digital media is often multifaceted and complex; it often entails both images and sound and well as the aforementioned techniques. Because of multimedia productions, a simple speech or piece of text can be just one of many layers of a particular persuasive appeal. I’m again going to focus on a video created for the End It Movement because I think that they take these rhetorical techniques and almost caricaturize them. 

In this video, they somehow take an appeal to emotion to the very extreme while at the same time, stripping down the information to the bare minimum. This video is really long, so I’m just going to focus on the first three minutes or so and talk briefly about the rest. At the opening of the video, all that the viewer sees and hears is a black background with red and white text overlay and some urgent, dramatic music. The very use of such contrasting colors and varying font sizes and boldness for the text makes certain words—like “SLAVERY” and “FORCED” and “PROPERTY”—stand out to the viewer. The makers of the video have cut the video down to its skeleton to provide the basic information that a viewer would need to be impacted by the video, and they slowly transition between frames and text to impart the gravity of the situation onto the viewer. After the music builds to create dramatic tension, the video shifts to show a girl breaking through a window and trying to escape people who are trafficking children. They maintain the dramatic music throughout this, and when the scene is over, they bring back the black background and red and white font before delving into the personal stories of three individuals who have been enslaved and have managed to be freed from slavery. Before telling the viewer the real stories of injustice that have actually occurred, the makers of this video felt the need to create an emotional atmosphere of suspense, tension, and upset in order to prepare the viewers to really understand, respond to, and act to prevent the stories of injustice that follow. All of this works together to create an emotional response within the viewer; we’re supposed to feel an urgency to stop this sort of injustice from happening, we’re supposed to recognize that trafficking children is wrong, and we’re supposed to be outraged into action.