This is ____. He was an ancient ____ philosopher who lived from 384-322 BCE. He was interested in and studied EVERYTHING, including physics, poetry, theater, music, politics, and biology. (He was a pretty smart guy). One of the things he is known for is his study of ____. Rhetoric is the art of making a persuasive argument. (Have you ever heard of a ____? It’s when someone asks a question, but they don’t want you to actually answer—they are just making a point.) For Aristotle, rhetoric was the art that overruled all the other arts and sciences known in his day. Why? Well, for instance, did you know that there is a substance known as dihydrogen monoxide ____ that is present in large amounts in almost everything you eat and drink? DHMO traces are found in a number of dangerous and poisonous compounds such as sulfuric acid, nitroglycerine, and ethyl alcohol. DHMO has also been found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors, and can cause severe burns in its ____ state. ____ of DHMO can cause death within hours. The worst part? It’s odorless, tasteless, and colorless, so you have no way of knowing it’s in your food. Despite all of this, the government REFUSES to ban it. Are you worried yet? You shouldn’t be. Although everything in the paragraph above is true, scientists would tell you the benefits of DHMO outweigh the risks. Also, DHMO is also commonly known as ____. But if you didn’t know that, you might be well on your way to signing a petition or lobbying the government for a DHMO ban, because some tricky rhetoric convinced you it was ____. In other words, ____ is the art of bending the world in the direction you want it to go, by winning over the ____ of other people, all through the power of your words. Gifted ____ (people who practice rhetoric) can have awesome or terrible effects on ____, based on how they choose to use their power. One thing is certain: people who are not familiar with how rhetoric works are much more easily ____ by flawed or unethical ____ Study this stuff carefully so you aren’t one of them! According to Aristotle, there are three main parts of rhetoric. All of them work together to persuade the audience that the speaker is making a sound ____. (Rhetoric applies to writing as well, but we will discuss it in terms of public speaking here, to make things easier.) The three parts are ____, ____, and ____—you may hear them referred to as the ____, or the ____. ____ is the Greek word for “character,” as in what kind of person you are. The word ____ comes from this same root, because ethical things are what a good person would do. In terms of rhetoric, ethos refers to the credibility or believability of the speaker. There are many things that go into establishing the ethos of the speaker, such as: how ____ and ____ she is known to be by the audience, whether she is ____ or biased, whether she has something personal to gain, whether she is an ____ on what is being discussed, and the manner she uses to present her arguments. Sometimes, the audience may make ____ about the speaker’s ____ that are incorrect. The speaker should try to anticipate these and clear them up at the beginning of the speech. For instance, if you are waiting to hear a world-famous brain surgeon speak at a medical conference, and the surgeon rushes in 20 minutes late, wearing rumpled, stained clothing, you might find it hard to take her seriously. She would probably want to start her talk by ____ for being late, and explaining that her flight was delayed and her luggage was lost, but she rushed here right from the airport in order to deliver her keynote speech. It is important to understand things from the ____ point of view, so that the rhetorician can create a ____ that will get rid of any doubts they might have. ____ is the next part of the ____. It comes from the Greek word for ____ and “experience”--the English words “pathetic” and ____ come from the same root. Pathos is an appeal to the emotions. It is an attempt to get the audience to ____ a certain way about the topic at hand, and then act based on those feelings. It also tries to get the ____ to put themselves in the shoes of the speaker, to feel things the way she does. ____ can appeal to both ____ emotions and ____ emotions. A skilled rhetor might flip between ____ to different emotions during the course of a single speech. He might also take into account the emotions the ____ is already feeling ____ he speaks--either because of an event or occasion that is taking place or pre-existing feelings they have on the topic. ____ completes the ____. Logos is an appeal to ____ or reason. Any fact or ____ the speaker has found through research would fall under the category of logos. She might also quote an expert on the topic or use other evidence to help her argument. Arguing through ____ (showing how two situations are very similar) is also a form of logos argument. Some might think that logos is the only tool a speaker needs to convince the audience of her position. If human beings were totally ____ creatures, like ____, that might be true--however; we all know there are times when people are less than rational. They might be ____ against the speaker, or have strong emotions on the topic that make them unlikely to listen to reason. They might also just be ____, or tired, and unable to ____ on a logical argument. A good rhetorician takes this all into account and uses all three parts of the ____ to make the most convincing ____ possible. Now, even if a speaker uses ethos, pathos, and logos to the best of her ability, there is no guarantee she is going to convince every person in her audience to go along with what she says. However, what she can make sure of is that she won’t be dismissed right away as untrustworthy or ignorant (lack of ____), as being emotionally insensitive (lack of ____), or as illogical (lack of ____). The audience will have to take what she is saying seriously, even if they don’t end up agreeing with her.

Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion

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