Essay On Ethos Pathos Logos

Plato, a Greek philosopher, once stated, “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the mind of men.” (qtd. in BrainyQuote). Rhetoric is the skill of speaking or writing formally and effectively as a way to persuade or influence people. Rhetoric can be broken up into three parts known as ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, pathos is an appeal to emotion, and logos is an appeal to logic. Rhetoric and its appeals are commonly used in the world, more specifically in videos to persuade viewers to follow certain belief or to purchase certain items. In this case, I watched three videos and I’ll be arguing how the rhetoric (ethos, pathos, and logos) were used in each video. In the first video, “Drunk History- Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks,” a woman explains the story of Claudette Colvin, a girl who was kicked off of a bus after she refused to give her seat up to a white passenger. While rhetoric isn’t used to persuade the viewers, it is used in the content of the video. Ethos is used when the NAACP chose Rosa Parks as icon for the civil rights movement. “[Rosa Parks] she was an adult. They didn't think
John Adams”, the ethos demonstrated in the video is Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. When they both start spreading lies about one another, the people believed them because both Jefferson and Adams were credible because they had founded America and had built a reputation. Because of it, their credibility was never questioned. If they didn’t have that credibility, none of their words would have made the newspaper. The ethos demonstrated is when Adams began listing things Jefferson would do if he became president, such as allowing incest and murder. By doing so, Adams was able to persuade people into voting him by putting fear in their hearts. Just like the “Drunk History- Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks” video, the only logos demonstrated in this video is that all the rumors and lies spread did