Strategic Thinking and Writing

CHAPTER 6

Three Writing Strategies

Introduction

Aristotle used these three terms, ethos, pathos, and logos, to explain how rhetoric works: “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos]. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.”¹

• Ethos (sometimes referred to as an appeal to authority), then, is used as a means of convincing an audience via the authority or credibility of the persuader, be it ...