1. Ethos- sense of authority either through use of research or tone.
Pathos- making an emotional connection in your writing.
Logos- using evidence and explanations in writing.
2. To appeal to a reader’s trust in authority a writer can use research and borrow authority from experts or a writer can write with confidence to establish authority. The reader will be more likely to listen to what you have to say if they believe you are an authority on the subject.
3. If a writer wants to appeal to the reader’s emotions then he has to use strong images. If the writer was trying to persuade people not to smoke using an image of a smoker with a hole in their throat from of lung cancer would provoke an emotion
4. If you use too much of a heavy appeal to emotion then you risk invoking disgust rather then interest. For example using pictures of mutilated bodies from wars may overshadow an antiwar message.
5. Using hard evidence and specialized explanations are ways of using logos in an argument. It’s important to use logos in a strong argument because it’s the only way to really establish credibility. Statistics are a great way to help persuade a reader about a generalization a writer might make.
6. I don’t think ethos is separate from pathos in that authority is related to how someone feels about another. I do think that pathos and logos don’t have much of a connection because one involves volatile emotions and other is straight forward
“Breeding Evil? Defending Video Games”
The Economist (Anonymous)
The writer of this article uses “ethos” in the way that every other paragraph or so he’ll drop a statistic to remind you that he’s put in some effort in researching the subject. He also offers up a couple instances of the past where the then current pastimes were considered to be destructive in their nature. Just like with ethos, the writer uses statistics as a form of “logos”. He writes that “American teenage boys play video games for around thirteen hours a week, yet watch television for around twenty-five hours a week” to point out that video games can’t be the predominate source of violence for kids. You could consider the writer’s use of flashback as “pathos”. The writer on more than one occasion describes how certain things we now consider tame were once taboo. He cites that rock and roll was once thought to encourage violence, promiscuity, and Satanism. It’s obvious that the writer is using the emotions connected to people’s love of rock and roll in comparison to others love of video games. In the last sentence of the article the author drops a hint that maybe the people of this generation, who can’t fathom video games as something heinous, will find themselves in opposition of some new technology in the future. The only reason for this scenario of the future you is to make the impact of the article stronger. For the most part I’d say the author used the three appeals effectively. I do think however that his use of “logos” may have been a bit one sided in that he didn’t offer any conflicting data to his own.