💧 Rhetorical Techniques

August 12, 2022

Rhetoric 🤨
  • The art of influence, friendship, and eloquence.
  • It is an essential skill in leadership.
  • How can I get people to do and believe what I want them to?

Purpose ❓
  • Support a clause
  • Promote a change
  • Refute a theory
  • Stimulate a theory
  • Win agreement
  • Arouse sympathy
  • Provoke anger

Goal Oriented 🏆
  • It is not “getting my way”.
  • Good rhetoric means: I have convinced you that my way is now your way.
  • A consensus — not dominance.
  • A shared faith in a choice.

Is it honest? 🤥
  • Rhetoric is only honest if you’re honest.
    • Rhetoric is also manipulation in another sense.

Audience 🗣️
  • Effective rhetoric targets an identified audience.
  • We, as readers of rhetoric, are not the audience. We’re observers.
  • We’re watching the interaction between the speaker and the audience.
    • Who is the audience?
    • What do they know?
    • What do they believe?
    • What do they expect?
    • How will they disagree with me?
    • What will they want me to address?
    • How can I or should I use jargon?
    • Should I use language that is:
      • informal, factual, objective, — or familiar, anecdotal, or personal?
    • How can I be decorous?

Appealing to the Audience
  • There are three appeals that I must make:
  • Ethos (ethical), Pathos (emotions), Logos (logic)
    An image from notion

Appeals are not strategies
  • Appeals are the three things that the speaker has to do to be persuasive.
  • How does he/she connect?
  • Perhaps the speaker will use reasoning:
    • Deductive and inductive

Logos (Logic) 🧠

Reasoning appeals to our sense of logic.
  • Deductive reasoning is based on premises (facts or agreed on ideas) — and then building conclusions based on these facts.
  • Inductive reasoning finds examples and uses them to build a conclusion.

Ways to be logical
  • Create a syllogism (deductive)
  • Ex: All English teachers must have degrees in English.
    • Bob is an English teacher → Bob has an English degree.
  • Allude to history, religious texts, great literature, or mythology (inductive)
  • Provide testimony (inductive)
  • Draw analogies (inductive)
  • Create metaphors (inductive)
  • Cite traditional culture (inductive)
  • Cite commonly held beliefs (inductive)

The ways we appeal are our strategies
  • Order things chronologically (deductive)
  • Provide evidence (deductive)
  • Classify evidence (deductive)
  • Cite authorities (deductive)
  • Quote research (deductive)
  • Use facts (deductive)
  • Theorize about cause and effect (deductive)
  • Cite precedent (inductive)
💡

Humans are not Vulcans — Logic does not trump emotions!

Pathos (Emotion) 🧑‍🦯
  • pathos, sympathy...empathy…
  • The appeal to the audience’s emotions.
    • Certain words and images evoke certain emotions.
    • This in turn moves an audience to sympathize with related ideas.
    • Pathos is a powerful tool to influence people to think and believe a certain thing.

Examples
  • Language that involves the senses — imagery
  • Includes bias or prejudice
  • Include anecdote
  • Include connotative language
  • Explore euphemisms

Tips
  • Use description
  • Use figurative language
  • Develop different tones
  • Experiment with informal language
  • Use emotion to show readers you understand their experiences.
  • Write about sensitive issues in a sensitive tone
  • Use your personal experiences to connect to readers.

Other Ways Pathos Works
  • Emotional appeals make logical claims stronger and more memorable
  • Humor is an emotional appeal that puts the reader at ease
  • Writers sometimes choose to present arguments in explicit, emotional terms.
  • Making people aware of how much they owe to others (guilt) is a common emotional appeal.
💥

Pathos is not a strategy!

Ethos (Credibility) 👽
  • ethos, ethics
  • An appeal to ethics, credibility, or character
    • Every speaker brings a different ethos to their argument
    • Ethos becomes evident through the language, evidence and images a speaker utilizes

Usage
  • Makes the audience believe that the writer is trustworthy
  • Demonstrates that the writer put in research time
  • Support reasons with appropriate, logical evidence
  • Demonstrates that the writer knows the audience and respects them
  • Show concern about communicating with the audience
  • Convince the reader that the writer is reliable and knowledgeable
  • Convince the reader that it’s smart to believe and trust you!

Why should I believe you?
  • Life hack — it’s why you should wear a suit or dress to a job interview!