Post on 30-Dec-2015
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