Blog Post #5: Chapter 1- Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

I would like to discuss the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos section of Chapter 1 in The Bedford Book of Genres. It seems that as time passes, the usage of each of these three rhetorical appeals changes. Take ethos for example, “the credibility, authority, and trustworthiness the writer/composer conveys to the audience.” As mentioned in a previous blog, there is a drastic increase in “fake news” on the internet.

People seem to rely less on ethos and more on the other two rhetorical appeals when they get their information, particularly pathos, an appeal to an audience’s emotions or values. Especially with the way that society is moving, not to offend anyone (ironically), but people, in general, are becoming offended far more easily than ever before. If one article is in support of abortion, and has high credibility, and another article which is against abortion has low credibility, most people who are against abortion will support the second article no matter what it says. Again, I don’t mean to offend anyone, it’s just my observation.

Finally, there is logos, “the logic and connection of facts and evidence to the point being made.” This is somewhat related to ethos in the way of fake news, many of the facts and logic simply don’t add up in these fake news articles. This is especially the case with more science or math-based articles, where the average reader doesn’t typically know everything regarding the topic being discussed. Take physics, for example. Most people don’t know all too much about physics and the math behind it, so when they read an article about quantum mechanics, which has “evidence” that doesn’t make any sense, the majority of readers will take it to be true. At this point, it isn’t really the readers fault because there are few credible places that can truly debunk information like that.