Persuasive Appeals
Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
What are Persuasive Appeals? What are their purposes? When are they used?
Persuasive appeals are an important part of creating a convincing argument. Persuasive appeals include ethos, logos, and pathos. These appeals are used to form a strong argument to prove a point. They are often used in commercials and in the body paragraphs of argumentative essays.
What is ethos?
Ethos is an appeal based on trust or character. Ethos shows your audience that you understand their point of view. Ethos often use celebrities or other trusted figures.
What is Logos?
Logos is an appeal to reason. It provides logical reasoning and evidence in description or narration. Logos often provides statistics.
What is pathos?
Pathos is an appeal to the emotions. It makes you feel strong emotions towards a product or cause. Pathos often uses descriptive, connotative, and figurative language to persuade you.
the more appeals the better!
Using all of the appeals combined will produce a very strong argument.
Plan for success
1. Research different exampls of ethos, logos, and pathos.
2. Refer to research and choose your strongest example from each appeal.
3. Write each appeal in a body paragraph.
4. Use body paragraphs and explanation to build argument.
Strong Examples
Ethos: If you are a successful professional basketball player, like Michael Jordan, you will make millions.
Logos: An animal is abused every ten seconds in the US, donate now to make an incredible difference in these animals lives.
Pathos: Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases being produced by our cruel humankind.
Weak examples
Ethos: If you are good at basketball, like my dad when he was in high school, you might make millions.
Logos: Lots of animals get hurt, donate now!
Pathos: Greenhouse gases are bad for the earth.