Aristotle identified three main means of persuasion used by speech makers and other users of rhetoric: ethos, logos, and pathos.. Ethos – authority Pathos - emotions Logos – logic

 Ethos -a mode of rhetoric appealing to authority or reputation  Logos -a mode of rhetoric appealing to logic  Pathos- a mode of rhetoric appealing to sympathy  Alliteration - the repetition of consonant sounds in text  Deductive - a kind of reasoning from the general to the specific  Fallacy- a rhetorical error or falsehood  Inductive - a kind of reasoning from the specific to the general

 Rhetoric is nothing more than the art of persuading people to agree with you.  This can be through writing, speech making, or any other form of communication.  As anyone who has seen a presidential speech or watched a late-night infomercial can agree, there are good and bad ways to go about this.  Whether you're a student trying to persuade your parents to let you stay out later, an essay writer arguing in favor of one interpretation of a play, or a political leader trying to move a nation to action on behalf of justice, the principles of rhetoric are the same.

 Aristotle identified three main means of persuasion used by speech makers and other users of rhetoric: ethos, logos, and pathos. Effective rhetoricians use at least one of these, and often all three.

 Ethos is a means of persuasion that relies on the audience members recognizing that the speaker or writer knows what he or she is talking about.  The president discussing gun control legislation, for example, has more authority on the subject than some random person on the street.

 Ethos includes more than just authority, though; it also includes your trust in a person good character, in their intelligence, or even just your sense that I am someone to whom you can relate.  Ethos is at work even when the speaker doesn't have any particular authority.  It's still their job to make you feel like they do, and to make you buy what they're saying as a result.

I’m going to use ethos to persuade you to buy this cough medicine! Hello! I’m here in this commercial to try to persuade you to buy a new cough medicine. I’m actually an actor, not a doctor, but I sure look like I have authority! You might even recognize me from that old TV show, Handsome Emergency Room Surgeons. Don’t you feel like you can trust my opinion on medicines for some reason? Look, I’m even wearing a white coat! That’s authority if ever I’ve seen it. Casting me in this commercial to tell you about medicine instead of some actor who was in a comedy about racecars, that’s ethos.

 It is with reluctance that I rise to express a disapprobation of any one article of the plan, for which we are so much obliged to the honorable gentlemen who laid it before us.  From its first reading, I have borne a good will to it, and, in general, wished it success.  In this particular of salaries to the executive branch, I happen to differ; and as my opinion may appear new and chimerical, it is only from a persuasion that it is right, and from a sense of duty, that I hazard it.  --Benjamin Franklin, "Speech in the Constitutional Convention on the Subject of Salaries," June 2, 1787

 The means of persuasion known as logos appeals to the listener's or reader's sense of logic.  This can include statistics, identifying causes and correlations, or drawing analogies to other, similar situations.

 In inductive reasoning, the speaker presents a specific example and then claims that what is true in this specific case must be true in all cases.  In deductive reasoning, the opposite is true: the speaker presents a general case and assumes that the same must be true for a specific case as well.

Inductive reasoning is unreliable. Not all fruits can be assumed to be sweet just because an orange is. Think about a lemon, for example! Inductive reasoning is often used in speeches to make associations that are not really there.