Rhetoric Article

I recently read an article on TED-Ed about the use of rhetoric. In the article it talks about Aristotle two thousand years ago and his attempt to explain how to get what you want just using your words. In other words how to use rhetoric and the art of persuasion. Giving that Aristotle is clearly not living today, it was Camille A. Langston describing the fundamentals of deliberative rhetoric and she shared some tips for appealing to an audience’s ethos, logos, and pathos in your next speech. The article talked about how today rhetoric is used in all forms of communication. Although, Aristotle focused on talking and he described different types of persuasive speech. Forensic, epideictic, and deliberative are the three types of rhetoric he focused on. Forensic is facts and judgments about the past, sort of similar to detectives at a crime scene. Epideictic is a proclamation about the present situation, as in wedding speeches. Lastly, deliberative focuses on the future, this is like politicians debating a new law by imagining what effect it might have in the future. Deliberative is also like activist urging change. In both cases the speakers give their audience with a possible future and try to help in avoiding or achieving it. According to Aristotle, if you really want to persuade your audience or cause a change you should use deliberative rhetoric. But there is other ways to use deliberative rhetoric besides using the future. This is through ethos, logos, and pathos. With ethos you try to persuade your credibility to get something in the future. While logos is the use of facts or logic. So, the article said logos is not just about stating facts or logic but it’s also about the structure and content of the speech itself. The point is to use factual knowledge to convince the audience but, speakers can also manipulate people with false information that the audience thinks is true. Lastly, pathos, the appeal to emotion. Which according to Aristotle is the most effective of the three. Pathos is neither  good or bad, but it may be not logical and unpredictable. It can just as easily rally people for peace as lead them to war. Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals still remain strong tools today, but deciding which of them to use is a matter of knowing your purpose, as well as using them at the right time. It's also  perhaps just as important to be able to notice when these same methods of persuasion are being used on you.