Teaching Persuasive Writing with Frankenstories

Having understood the persuasive context, a good speaker can develop a persuasive strategy.

For this, Aristotle’s system of rhetorical appeals continue to provide a great framework:

• Ethos (Character): Establishing the speaker's credibility & character
• Pathos (Emotion): Engaging the audience’s feelings & emotions
• Logos (Logic): Guiding the audience through claims, evidence & reasoning

These appeals are like modes that a speaker can move between as needed.

These persuasive modes can be used in any combination & order.

Effective persuasion, especially in a contentious issue, will usually blend all three.

However, we’d argue that the modes do have a loose cause-and-effect hierarchy:

• Character is essential because if the audience doesn’t trust the speaker, emotion & logic can backfire.
• Emotion is often needed to motivate the audience to take action.
• Logic is the one that seems like it should work all the time, but, in practice, it often fails if character and emotion haven’t been established.