Have You Ever Wondered How Lying Affects Others?

Have you ever wondered how lying affects others? Well, Stephanie Ericsson offers an interesting stance in this question by writing, “The Ways We Lie”. Primarily using her personal stories and personal quotes about lying from well-known people, she addresses the most common ways that people lie throughout their lives. She argues that people don’t realize that lying can affect your life and others by telling personal stories and choosing specific words like, “We” to make the reader feel certain emotions like anger and to make them defensive. However, the credibility of her argument comes from famous and well-known people’s quotes who we think of as trustworthy, but also of her personal stories. While the logic of this essay comes from the personal stories that she writes. So by using all three modes of persuasion to convince us that lying can affect your life and others, Stephanie Ericsson proves her point effectively by using pathos which connect the reader with the writer, logos which persuades an audience with reason, and ethos which helps the reader trust the writer.

While Stephanie Ericsson was writing her essay, “The Ways We Lie”, Stephanie Ericsson immediately starts to get engage the reader's emotions by choosing an adequate title, “ The Ways We Lie”. In this title the keyword that she uses is the word, “We”. By using this simple but very effective word she engages the reader into her writing, which allows the reader to feel the emotions that Stephanie wants the reader to feel. Here by using the word, “We” Stephanie makes the reader feel angry and defensive because she accuses the reader of lying to others. Stephanie Ericsson doesn’t stop there though, she also makes the reader question themselves by saying to themselves, “ do I lie”. This question makes the reader think about all the times he or she has lied. Stephanie Ericsson also makes the reader feel emotions by saying, “ Take, for instance, the sergeant in Vietnam who knew one of his men were killed in action but listed him as missing so that the man’s family would receive indefinite compensation instead of the lump-sum pittance the military gives widows and children. His intent was honorable. Yet for twenty years this family kept their hopes alive, unable to move on to a new life” (160-161). Here Stephanie Ericsson gives an example of a white lie by telling us that the man who thought lying was helping the family. She does this because it shows that lying can affect you and others throughout your whole life, just like how the man lied and the other family members thought it was true. This mode of persuasion named pathos helps increases her effectiveness because by using this mode Stephanie Ericsson helps connect the reader to the reading.

Throughout Stephanie Ericsson essay, “The Ways We Lie”, Stephanie uses quotes from well known people to increase her credibility in her writing. One of