Persuasive Appeals and Techniques

These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Aristotle’s Three Persuasive Appeals

Aristotle is thought to be one of the greatest philosophers, teachers, and

thinkers of all time.

In his famous work, Rhetoric (finished 322 BCE), Aristotle identifies three major

types of persuasive appeals:

logos, pathos, and ethos.

LOGOS – a logical appeal

Appeal to the intellect of your audience using

organization and proof (evidence)

Climate Change: Logos Arguments

PATHOS – an emotional appeal

Appeal to the heart of your audience by

affecting your audience’s feelings

of love, anger, disgust, fear, compassion,

patriotism, or other emotions

Climate Change:Pathos Arguments

ETHOS – a personal, ethical appeal

The audience buys the message because they trust the messenger. They believe the messenger because of his or her honesty, reputation, competency, fairness and credentials.

Climate Change:Ethos Arguments

Gabriele Hegerl, research professor at Duke's School

of the Environment and Earth Sciences

Vice President, Al Gore inAn Inconvenient Truth

Persuasive Techniques

1. allusiona reference to someone or something that is already known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, or popular culture

1. allusionThe force was with him the

day he took the English III test.

Don’t confuse allusion with illusion

2. rhetorical question

• A question asked for an effect, not actually requiring an answer.

2. rhetorical questionHow many roads must a man walk down before

you call him a man?

Yes, an’ how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, an’ how many times must the cannon balls fly before they’re forever banned?

Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”

3. repetition• the repetition of words, phrases, and

ideas for emphasis or impact

…you want to fall on him, weeping, because you are so lonely, so lonely always, and all contact is contact, and all contact makes us so grateful we want to cry and dance and cry and cry.

» Dave Eggers, “Accident”

3. repetition

“Because it is my name!...How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

John “The Stallion” Proctor

4. parallel structure

• the repetition of words or phrases that have similar grammatical structures.

“…government of the people, by the people, for the people shall notperish from the earth.”

4. parallel structure

"Our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with a gas, racism with a goodwill gesture."

--Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness.

4. parallel structure

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

--Tim Robbins, actor/writer/director