Good persuasion involves logos, pathos, and ethos

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From the course by University of Washington

Speaking to persuade: Motivating audiences with solid arguments and moving language

60 ratings

University of Washington

Speaking to persuade: Motivating audiences with solid arguments and moving language

60 ratings

Course 3 of 4 in the Specialization Dynamic Public Speaking

In the professional realm, we need to be able to argue without being argumentative. Whether you are fundraising for a nonprofit, pitching a business proposal, or suggesting a change to company policy, you are making arguments. In making the case for your topic, you often want to raise awareness, identify a pressing problem, discuss appropriate solutions, and outline specific steps for the audience. To be persuasive, you must be clear (the audience may have little to no existing knowledge), you must be convincing (you are trying to sway the audience that your argument is valid), and you must be compelling (you are trying to motivate the audience enough so that they want to take specific actions). Persuasive speaking thus requires clarity, strategy, topic mastery, plus a sense of style and presence. By the end of this course, you should be able to design persuasive speeches that address problems and solutions and that motivate audience members. You should be able to use rhetorical style strategically and deliver passionate and compelling speeches. Learners will record speeches, providing and receiving peer feedback.

From the lesson

Welcome. Let's develop a persuasive argument.

In this module, we’ll focus on the key strategies for designing persuasive speeches. In examining persuasive speaking, we tackle both solid argument and eloquent writing. After sorting through the broad concerns about persuasion, we start with some of the most powerful argumentative tools you can have: status quo and stock issues. By the end of the week, these two ideas will have helped us figure out what we need to argue (and what we don’t) and how to go about it. If you want some feedback, you’ll be able to upload an introductory speech for peer review.

What is persuasion?4:00

Good persuasion requires careful planning.3:49

Good persuasion involves logos, pathos, and ethos4:59

Good persuasion responds to questions of fact, policy, and value.3:43

What’s the status quo and burden of proof?4:36

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Matt McGarrity
Principal Lecturer
UW Department of Communication

Aristotle said that speakers convince their audiences in three main ways.

Logos, an appeal to logic or at least something that seemed logical.

Pathos, an appeal to emotions.

Basically, putting the audience in the right frame of mind and ethos,

an appeal to the speaker's credibility.

Now, you may or may not remember, we spend a great deal of time talking about this

ethos issue in the informative speaking course.

Now, modern research confirms that these approaches

contribute to overall influence.

And in fact, one of the dominant theories of persuasion in the past few decades

has been the elaboration likelihood model, or ELM.

Basically, ELM suggests that people respond to messages

differently based on their levels of involvement.

Now ELM sees two types of processing roots in the brain.

Central and peripheral.

If a person is motivated and able to attend to a message, then they typically

process it more centrally meaning they closely listen to it and

evaluate the message.

And we would call this high elaboration.

Now if a person is unmotivated and or unable to attend to the message,

they process it more peripherally.

They don't closely examine it.

Now in low elaboration, peripheral cues have a greater impact.

So for example, liking a person is an influential factor.

We know this.

It's a core idea driving Aristotle's' notion of ethos.

Now we typically want to agree with people that we like.

If your friend is talking about how one sports team is better than another and

you really don't care then you're more likely to be persuaded.

Elaboration is low so the peripheral cue influence is high.

Now, in the same situation and you really do care about the topic and

you disagree, liking isn't going to be as influential.

Elaboration is high, and

so argument factors are going to play a much more significant role.

Why go into all this?

Because good persuasion generally required logos, pathos and ethos.

Strategies that appeal to low and high elaboration.

And I think it's important to remind ourselves of this because modern

advertising, and discussions about modern political campaigning skews

the conversation about persuasion.

Television ads have to rely on pathos and peripheral cues.

Why?

A 30 second ad can't lay out all the detailed arguments for a product or for

a candidate.

So instead what ads do is they'll pull in images that encourage liking or

they'll include phrasing that connotes authority but remember,

persuasion isn't simply pathos, in the settings we find ourselves in,

you have to be credible and make a good argument.

Let me give you an example of this, so

years ago I was part of the study looking at citizen deliberation.

Before an election citizens were randomly invited to serve on a panel

that would listen to arguments for and

against a crime bill that was coming up on this next ballot.

So they comprise sort of a representation,

a pretty good representation of that voting pool.

So for a few days these citizens listened to experts and

advocates make their cases and then they voted.

Now the citizens weren't brought in because they were experts, they weren't.

But by the end of this process they knew a lot about this bill.

Their elaboration goes way up.

So they could evaluate the credibility of the experts and

the validity of the argument.

Now, right before the vote, the pro and con sides made their closing arguments.

Now, the con side made solid arguments, logos, they demonstrated their concern for

the audience, ethos and they told some pretty powerful stories, pathos.

The pro side was busy and they didn't prep as well and so for their closing,

the pro side show this tn minute graphic video about the dangers of crime.

It was nothing but pathos and fear appeals.

The video, as a matter of fact, was actually pretty similar to

the television campaign that the pro side was running in this state.

And that video may have worked for a television audience, but

this citizen panel could not have rejected it harder.

They were insulted that the pro side had attempted to simply appeal to

emotion and fear.

That audience was highly invested and they needed high quality arguments.

And in fact, about 90% of that citizen panel opposed this crime bill.

But at the beginning of the process,

before they had heard all this stuff, only 25% had opposed it.

That's significant persuasive movement.

So don't let anyone tell you that persuasion is just a matter of pathos.

Persuasion's a complicated thing with many variables.

Audience, topics, settings, history so on and so forth.

You need to combine logos, pathos, and ethos.

Now in this class we're going to start with logos making our case using good

arguments.

And then will bring in ethos and pathos as a way of strengthening those arguments and

those ideas.

[MUSIC]

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