Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

The Greek philosopher Aristotle was an innovative, smart man with many aspects of insight that helped the human race of today. Of all his brilliant ideas, the foundation of Rhetoric’s was his most important one. Aristotle’s rule of Rhetoric’s included three main elements, Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. The element of Pathos deals with implementing emotional appeals when trying to persuade others. Speaking on personal connections that strive to reach a bonding point with the intended audience is a great way of using Pathos in action.

Pathos can also mean displaying actions of pity and sadness towards others. The next element of rhetoric’s, Logos, focuses on using factual pieces of knowledge to win an audience over. The prefix “Lo” stands for logic and reason. All information used under Logos contains statistics and facts under whatever the speaker is trying to present. Even though the element of logos is based on statistics and facts, people sometimes tend to alter the truth or provide false information towards their audience.

This can lead to problems in the near future due to the fact that people have the possibility of being misled by a speech. The final element of rhetoric’s, Ethos, shows the importance of a speaker having credibility with their words. This falls hand in hand with persuasion because having credibility, trust, and loyalty from the audience determines how likely the speaker will have supporters. Another way of defining Ethos would be displaying sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs towards others. Truth is the overall idea of an Ethos element.

The speaker Jill Stein displays all three of these aspects in her speech given on July 25th, 2016. She shows signs of Pathos during her speech when she gratefully thanks Bernie Sanders for his involvement in the presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She states “We are grateful to Bernie Sanders for having lifted up this movement, and being this movement. This movement with Bernie, it came up the mountain, but together, we will go on to the promise land”. Stein clearly states pure emotion in this phrase, showing her large amount of thanks towards the politician Bernie Sanders.

Ethos can be shown in Stein’s speech when she explains what the social movement will change in the near future. Some examples of this include “In the fight for $15 minimum wage, in the fight to make sure every black life matters, in the fight to stop the pipelines all over this country, in the fight to cancel student debt, in the fight to create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights not un-regime changes”. Each point brought up in that phrase is based on true statements and problems about our economy. Jill Stein displays Logos in the speech when she points out the flaws of Hillary Clinton, stating “The fact that Hillary has adopted this position against the TPP, but the democratic platform would not even pretend to stop the TPP tells us how far we would get under a

Hillary Clinton administration, no where! The fact that Hillary Clinton “solved it” in the DNC event to relegate Bernie Sanders, to open note on an opening Monday evening instead of the night of the nomination is an outrage against this movement’s success”. Here pre-statement of “the fact” shows that what she was saying about Hillary Clinton actually happened. She also shows Logos in her statement by naming the specific day and times that politician Clinton revealed flaws in her campaign.

I feel that the strongest appeal in Jill Stein’s speech was when she praised Bernie Sanders for making his name and movement known in the presidential campaign. Stein’s phrase of Pathos really exemplified her overall purpose for giving that speech on July 25th.