What if logos told the truth

As a communicator yourself, you will benefit from being able to see how others rely upon ethos, logos, and pathos so that you can apply what you learn from your observations to your own speaking and writing. When you evaluate an appeal to ethos , you examine how successfully a speaker or writer establishes authority or credibility with her intended audience.

You are asking yourself what elements of the essay or speech would cause an audience to feel that the author is or is not trustworthy and credible. A good speaker or writer leads the audience to feel comfortable with her knowledge of a topic. The audience sees her as someone worth listening to—a clear or insightful thinker, or at least someone who is well-informed and genuinely interested in the topic.

Some of the above questions may strike you as relevant to an evaluation of logos as well as ethos—questions about the completeness and accuracy of information and whether it is used fairly. In fact, illogical thinking and the misuse of evidence may lead an audience to draw conclusions not only about the person making the argument but also about the logic of an argument. In a perfect world, everyone would tell the truth and we could depend upon the credibility of speakers and authors.

Unfortunately, that is not always the case. You would expect that news reporters would be objective and tell new stories based upon the facts. Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Brian Williams all lost their jobs for plagiarizing or fabricated part of their news stories. After 28 years of employment, it was determined that she never graduated from college Lewin, Beyond lying about their own credentials, authors may employ a number of tricks or fallacies to lure you to their point of view.

Some of the more common techniques are described below. Others may be found in the appendix. When you recognize these fallacies being committed you should question the credibility of the speaker and the legitimacy of the argument. If you use these when making your own arguments, be aware that they may undermine or destroy your credibility.

Ad hominem : attacking the person making an argument rather than the argument itself. Guilt by association : linking the person making an argument to an unpopular person or group.

Examples: In politics, decorating a stage with red, white, and blue flags and bunting; in advertising, using pleasant or wholesome settings as the backdrop for print or video ads. Testimonial fallacy : inserting an endorsement of the argument by someone who is popular or respected but who lacks expertise or authority in the area under discussion. The most general structure of this argument runs something like the following: Person A claims that Person A is a respected scientist or other authority; therefore, the claim they make is true.

When you evaluate an appeal to logos , you consider how logical the argument is and how well-supported it is in terms of evidence. You are asking yourself what elements of the essay or speech would cause an audience to believe that the argument is or is not logical and supported by appropriate evidence. Diagramming the argument can help you determine if an appeal to logos is manipulative. Are the premises true? Does the conclusion follow logically from the premises?

Is there sufficient, typical, accurate, and relevant evidence to support inductive reasoning? Is the speaker or author attempting to divert your attention from the real issues?

These are some of the elements you might consider while evaluating an argument for the use of logos. Pay particular attention to numbers, statistics, findings, and quotes used to support an argument.

It is so often discussed that we assume it must be true. Careful research will show that the original marriage study was flawed, and divorce rates in America have steadily declined since Peck, If there is no scientific evidence, why do we continue to believe it?

Part of the reason might be that it supports our idea of the dissolution of the American family. Fallacies that misuse appeals to logos or attempt to manipulate the logic of an argument are discussed below. Other fallacies of logos may be found in the appendix. Hasty generalization: jumping to conclusions based upon an unrepresentative sample or insufficient evidence. Indian Americans must all be great spellers! Begging the question: circular argument because the premise is the same as the claim that you are trying to prove.

That is proof that vaccines are to blame. She is a Radford student. Therefore she is a member of a sorority. Smoke screen : avoiding the real issue or a tough question by introducing an unrelated topic as a distraction; sometimes called a red herring. His position is that we should let down our defenses and just trust our enemies not to attack us! The red herring is as much a debate tactic as it is a logical fallacy.

It is a fallacy of distraction, and is committed when a listener attempts to divert an arguer from his argument by introducing another topic. This can be one of the most frustrating, and effective, fallacies to observe.

The fallacy gets its name from fox hunting, specifically from the practice of using smoked herrings, which are red, to distract hounds from the scent of their quarry.

Just as a hound may be prevented from catching a fox by distracting it with a red herring, so an arguer may be prevented from proving his point by distracting him with a tangential issue. People may be uninterested in an issue unless they can find a personal connection to it, so a communicator may try to connect to her audience by evoking emotions or by suggesting that author and audience share attitudes, beliefs, and values—in other words, by making an appeal to pathos.

Even in formal writing, such as academic books or journals, an author often will try to present an issue in such a way as to connect to the feelings or attitudes of his audience. In I attended an evening class in visual communication at Beckmans school of design in Stockholm.

TwistedSifter The Best of the visual Web, sifted, sorted and summarized. Apr 14, Share this:. Trending on TwistedSifter. What if Logos Told the Truth? The Shirk Report — Volume Would you like some more? Sign up for our daily email and receive the Sifter's newest posts! Daily Weekly.

Search for:.