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AP Language. Wed, Aug 14th, 2013 at 4:19 pm

We looked at a number of advertisements today in order to wrap our heads around this “rhetoric” concept. Here’s the slideshow:

We asked a few questions of each piece:

What does the author want the audience to do/believe?
How does the author help the audience trust him or her?
How does the author help the audience to care?

These questions correlate nicely with the threeÂ rhetorical appeals we discussed later:

Logos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s sense of reasonableness or logic
Ethos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s trust/sense of credibility
Pathos: an author’s appeal to the audience’s emotions or desires

We’ll discuss these at length throughout this session. If you come across an excellent argument, send me a link in the comments or via email. If you’re looking for written arguments (we’ll begin discussing these next week), here’s a list of places to look.

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