There are a bunch of ways I could try to convince you to buy more grapes.
I could tell you that there’s research that says grapes contain Vitamins C and K, which
are great for your health.
I could tell you that I’m an expert in viticulture, the growing and harvesting of grapes,
and I personally vouch for how awesome they are.
I could even show you a heartwarming video about a family that has subsisted on grape
farming for five generations,
complete with an adorable two-year-old saying, ‘buy more grapes!’
Now, maybe you don’t like grapes, and none of those persuasive strategies would work on you.
Still, each effort to convince you represents a kind of rhetorical appeal, a strategy we
use for persuasion.
We already use rhetorical appeals in everyday life, but categorizing them
and understanding how they work can help us use them more purposefully.
That, in turn, makes our writing more compelling to read.
Understanding rhetorical appeals and how they affect the purpose and strategy of our writing
is what we’re up to today in Study Hall: Composition,
presented by Arizona State University and Crash Course.
I’m Yumna Samie, let’s get started.
Let’s jump right in with a useful distinction.
Purpose is what your writing is trying to achieve or do.
And performance is what it actually says.
It’s a performance when I shiver and ask my roommate, “hey, are you cold?”
Yes, I’m asking her about her needs, but underneath is a different purpose.
“I am freezing and want to turn up the heat!”
Purpose changes with every communication we make.
It’s what the writer wants to achieve in a particular context with a particular audience,
tailored to each unique rhetorical situation.
And we take that situation into account when we develop our performance,
using rhetorical appeals as persuasive strategies.
Sometimes we can’t quite tell why a persuasive performance didn’t really land with our audience.
There are so many factors that lots of people just chalk it up to timing or luck.
However, there’s a benefit to breaking down the rhetorical appeals and being a little
more strategic in our writing.
It can help us make our writing more effective more often.
The three broad types of rhetorical strategies are known as appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos.
If they sound like Greek to you, that’s because these words date back to the Greek
philosopher Aristotle’s time.
Each appeal connects to a way that people make decisions or change their minds.
Appeals to logos, or logical appeals, are really common in academic and research writing.
Appealing to logos is when you use reasoning, facts, and evidence to persuade someone.
Most of us like to think we have logical reasons and facts to back up why we believe or do
certain things.
Even if you don’t see yourself as hyper-rational,
when someone offers us a lot of useful facts and connects them to their argument, we feel
the pressure to change our minds.
Appeals to logos can be used responsibly, connecting the dots between the research
or statistics and an appropriate response.
People can also use facts and data to confuse their readers,
making it seem like there’s a connection where there might not be one.
Data literacy is the ability to critically analyze the circumstances that created that
fact or those statistics
and find out what they’re really saying.
Having strong data literacy helps you read--and use--appeals to logos well.
Think about gum manufacturers who say things like,
“5 out of 5 dentists surveyed say our gum is good for your teeth.”
This is an appeal to logos, since it’s citing research and showing you a connection
to the core claim the gum company wants to make - “you should buy our gum.”
But the company could have paid the dentists to say this fact,
or they could have only asked five dentists who were all fans of the gum already.
This is the kind of statistic that you’d want to dig into a little.
By looking into the particulars of the study, you might find out whether the survey is
compelling evidence or … less than reputable.
We’ve gone into more depth about evaluating arguments in other parts of this series,
so let’s move on to the second kind of appeals: appeals to ethos, or appeals to credibility.
These appeals essentially ask people to believe the things you say because of the kind of
person you are.
In daily life, we believe certain facts because they come from people we know and trust.
For strangers, though, we give credibility based on expertise, experience, and demonstrable
know-how.
Appeals to ethos are often used to shore up a logical claim,
such as asking you to trust a particular statistic because it’s been evaluated by a well-known researcher.
People with one kind of expertise or authority, however, may try to use their credibility
to convince you of something that doesn’t have anything to do with their expertise.
A great example of this is the social media influencer.
They hope that their popularity will give them the credibility to sell products in ‘sponsored content.’
They hope that followers who really trust their fashion choices will trust their advice
about hand lotions, comfortable mattresses, or web hosting sites too.
Scrutinize appeals to ethos closely by asking yourself whether you trust this person in
the first place
and whether you trust them to be experts on this particular subject.
Do some research if you have to, to figure out what kind of doctor they are or what claims
they’ve made in the past!
If their claims often boil down to “do this because I said so,” that’s not great argumentation.
Finally, we have appeals to pathos, or appeals to emotion and shared values.
They can be very powerful and bring people to a side, but appeals to pathos can also
lead readers astray,
letting their emotions take them away from their actual goals or values.
If you break them down, political ads often cite only one or two core statistics to convince
you to support a candidate.
But then they layer on pictures of that candidate looking impressive in a cool suit,
and some patriotic music,
and highly-emotion-filled voiceovers--not to make the statistic stronger,
but to sweep you away with your emotions toward this person.
Emotional appeals get a bad reputation because our emotions may lead us
away from evidence-based decisions.
When my dog cries while I’m eating dinner, I’m tempted to share half my plate with her,
even though I know she should be eating her own food.
That being said, some of us have a hard time getting excited about a project or purpose
without an emotional tie-in,
so think of appeals to pathos as just another way to support your arguments.
After all, if a really well-reasoned paper is just a dry list of facts, people might
not even finish reading it.
That definitely gets in the way of persuasion.
Understanding how to combine rhetorical appeals allows us to dissect and improve our effective
and ineffective persuasive writing.
Like a figure skater combining skills for extra points from the judges,
we can land a particular amazing point through a light emotional push,
three facts, and a mention of our credibility on the subject.
Now, folks can be suspicious when writers admit to being ‘strategic communicators.’
They worry that thinking too much about rhetorical appeals means a writer is trying to manipulate people.
The thing is, though, manipulation can happen whether we notice that we’re being persuaded
or just get swept up in someone’s charisma and miss the fact that they’re persuading us.
Persuasion can be used for good ends and bad ones, so working strategically to persuade
someone is not inherently bad.
So, basically, we should get into the habit of always critically analyzing rhetorical
appeals and asking how we’re being persuaded.
The purpose behind the performance really matters.
And we’ve got three techniques to help us do this critical thinking.
First, whether we’re creating or reading a text, look it over with this key question in mind:
“Presentation or purpose?”
This technique simply involves reading over a particular text and seeing whether the words
on the page
--the presentation--align with the overall purpose.
When you take a second to see what the text is actually doing,
you’ll be better equipped to make small changes to ensure you’re actually achieving
your purpose,
or understanding what a writer wants you to take away.
Our second technique is to dig into texts to see where and how the writing is using
appeals to logos, or logical appeals.
We call this technique, Careful there, logos!
Look over the writing with a highlighter or a glitter gel pen or whatever utensil you
like best.
Identify where you or the author are appealing to logos, and make some notes on the connections.
Check whether the logical appeals are warranted and connected to the purpose and argument.
While logos is great, remember that audiences get tired of watching only toe loops over
and over in figure skating.
Writers can combine appeals to logos with appeals to ethos and pathos where appropriate,
to break it up and appeal to a more diverse audience.
On that front, our last technique is to be true to your audience.
Your audience may be more open to certain rhetorical appeals than others.
A room full of scientists who spend all day doing physics calculations may need an extra
helping of appeals to logos with data or logical argumentation.
Or you might add more of your background and experience as an appeal to ethos
for an audience of strangers who need to know your credentials before they trust the rest
of your argument.
When reading someone else’s work, consider what the genre and media can tell you about
the audience,
and how the writer does--or doesn’t--appeal to them.
And remember, in this case, you’re a part of the audience, too.
To use this strategy in your writing, think through what is most appealing to your audience,
then think about how you can revise your writing to include more of what matters to them.
You can still use the other appeals, but make sure you’ve got the core things that will
most convince them.
For an example, let’s check out a Writer in Action.
Omar is writing a cover letter for a job in the software engineering department at BotMop,
a company that develops floor-cleaning robots.
He drafts his first paragraph with a special attention to appeals to pathos, since the
hiring manager reading his letter is likely to be proud of BotMop.
He includes two specific points of praise.
He loves their mission to donate BotMops to community centers,
and he is impressed by their ability to code different cleaning styles for each flooring type.
He uses the second paragraph to establish his credibility with appeals to ethos.
He covers an internship he had doing software engineering for a smart thermostat company.
He also mentions one particularly famous professor he worked for at a well-known university in
software engineering circles.
Finally, he uses the third paragraph to get into some key appeals to logos, since without them,
the first two paragraphs are less useful.
He mentions that he knows three common coding languages, Java, Python, and HTML.
Then he talks about winning a robotics competition and the fact that he lives close by
so he can come in for an in-person interview easily.
He revises to be sure that he’s making every sentence work toward his purpose of convincing
them he’s right for the job.
He balances his audience’s desire for facts that prove he’s a qualified worker with
the need for them to like him
and want him as a colleague.
Omar then sends his application, confident that he’s appealed as well as he can.
Omar is a Writer in Action!
We all use rhetorical appeals,
but we also have room for improvement in aligning our combinations of appeals to our purposes
for writing.
When we focus on what our audience values, though, as well as making sure we understand
our own purposes,
we can use the three types of rhetorical appeals to pull together more convincing arguments.
Join us next time for the final discussion in our series,
where we’ll dig deeper into how we achieve our writing purpose through the presentation
of our writing.
Thanks for watching Study Hall: Composition, which is produced by Arizona State University
and the Crash Course team at Complexly.
If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us here in Study Hall, be sure to subscribe.
You can learn more about ASU and the videos produced by Crash Course
in the links in the description.
See you next time!