Classical Principals of Argumentation

Classical principals of argumentation

When writing, authors use different methods to reach an audience: persuasive and argumentative. The goal is to change the audience way of thinking and gave them support the author's opinion. Some writers would prefer to use the classical principals of argumentation: Ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos will be the authors credibility, meaning how well respected he is and how much people trust him. Pathos will be how the authors will choose his language to persuade the reader thru his emotions. Then we have logos, where the author uses his logical reasoning to persuade the reader, by clarifying his claim he pulls the reader to his way of thinking. This three are the classical principals of argumentations: Aristotle's appeals.

Ethos

In this essay that I have chosen: what the waters revealed (Jim Wallis, 2005) the author uses the classical principals of argumentation to create a persuasive argument. Let's first talk about how he uses ethos to his advantage. With all his years of experience in defending social justice, we can say he is an expert on the field. He is a veteran of the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. He is a political activist and when it comes to issues on peace and social justice, he strongly defends them. He has a passion to help the people living in poverty who were impacted by hurricane Katrina, but not only the ones directly affected but the ones surrounding them. He has also served as the spiritual adviser for our president Barack Obama (sojourners, 2011). With all of this he created a sense of authority (ethos) when he addresses the issues with a firm tone and he urges readers for a change to this nation's future. And you can feel how passionate he is about this subject with the way he expresses his feelings.

Pathos

The author uses pathos (emotion) when he writes "they were already vulnerable before this calamity; now they were totally exposed and on their own". With this statement he uses pathos (emotion) and reaches to the audiences by appealing to the readers emotion.