Ethos Pathos Logos Essays

This paper analyzes the types, forms, and effectiveness of the author's use of pathos to evoke emotion from their audience to persuade them to support the purpose of their message. Defined in the course pack as "using emotion to persuade" (Heasley et al. 128) pathos is a technique rhetorists use to garner an emotion response from their audience through one of four methods. These five methods are word choice, vivid examples, personal experience, scare tactics and sensory details; authors can employ these methods individually or in conjunction with one another to invoke a pathetic response from their audience.

Society is obsessed with fitness and weight loss. Ever since I was in sixth grade I have had issues with my weight and self-image. The article “Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, by Susie OrBach focuses on how our society puts this unrealistic image of what women should look like into everyone’s heads. The media and magazines urge women to conform, at any cost, into a constantly changing expectation of what is beautiful. Women are taught to look at themselves from an outside view, to be a sex image for men and fuel the diet and fashion industries. Society thinks if women do not fit within the unrealistic image something is wrong with them. The highly glorified concept of beauty marketed by the media contributes to the concern

In Neil Postman’s novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he argues that rationality in America has become dictated by television. Through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos, Postman demonstrates that his claim is valid and reliable. These are three forms of persuasion that are used to influence others to agree with a particular point of view. Ethos, or ethical appeal, is used to build an author’s image. Ethos establishes a sense of credibility and good character for the author (Henning). Pathos, or emotional appeal, involves engaging “an audience's sense of identity, their self-interest, their emotions” (Henning). If done correctly, the power of emotions can allow the reader to be swayed to agree with the author. Logos, or logical appeal,

People need to be informed on the issue that unrealistic beauty standards, set by the society, are harmful and can cause a “schema that combines three fundamental components: the idealization of slenderness; an irrational fear of fat; and a belief that weight is a central determinant of one’s identity” (Lintott 67). Our society promotes a specific body image as being attractive: being thin. It is represented throughout mass media, both in the physical and online worlds. The media exposes society with impractical body types, pushing individuals, especially women, to look like them. Today, negative body image encourages women to engage in disordered eating and obsessive behaviors in order to fit a certain impractical standard of beauty. In fact, according to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), 20 million females will “suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life” (Lintott 68). We contribute so much time striving to look like what society wants us to resemble, that we begin to see others and ourselves as what is presented physically rather than who a person is. Some individuals of the general public are influenced by the media to believe that this thin ideal is the norm and that the media is not causing any harm. However, this thin ideal is detrimental and is the main reason for the increase in the development and encouragement in eating disorders, body dissatisfaction in women and a rise in the number of pro-anorexia websites.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are all devices that Barbara Ehrenreich effectively uses throughout her novel Nickel and Dimed to prove that America needs to address the commonly overlooked issue of poverty within every community. It is important that she uses all three devices because they help support her argument by increasing her credibility, connecting to the readers’ emotions, and appealing to their sense of logic. The combination of these devices puts a sense of urgency on the problem Ehrenreich is addressing and therefore creates an effective argument.

An overweight lady walks up and down the magazine aisle in hope to find something interesting to read. She noticed that all of the fitness magazines have one thing in common: stick-figure skinny, tall, small breasted, and blonde models on every cover. In the Western society this “perfect image” is used as bait to trap women. According to Susie Orbach’s essay, “Fat Is a Feminist Issue”, promotes the idea that being overweight is a way for women to rebel against societal pressures to be thin (452). On the one hand, Orbach is right that women should rebel against society.

Music can definitely make differences and can help the human’s motor and reasoning skills. Cases have been reported that children who have at least three years of experience in the music world perform better than those who are not. These children were tested on nonverbal reasoning skills which includes analyzing visual information such as comparing and contrasting shapes and patterns. Involving your skills in music does more important positive changes that you can not imagine.

An author’s ability to persuade and grab the reader’s attention is often due to the use of rhetorical devices. By using different forms of rhetoric, an author is able to express emotion and provide factual evidence in the hopes that he or she will grow more credible. A recently published article titled, Should America Follow Israel’s Example and Ban Too-Thin of Models by: Elinor Frankel, explains the nation’s problem with eating disorders. Throughout the article, the author uses the rhetorical devices ethos, pathos, and logos to convey her message about this growing epidemic.

After reading your discussion board, the main idea in the source is the cause of media did to Kelsey Hibberd body image, it caused her to have eating disorders, depression and her self-esteem was low. This source is credible because it gives you a insight of what people feel and they go throught when the media impact their body image. The source is not biased because this article is a personal narrative which means it is coming from someone else  perspective, so it does show things that are

Images in the media are extremely powerful and affect the way women think about themselves and about their body. Hilary Rowland, author of “Media Images Are Unrealistic” states how the images shown everyday cause women to “feel insecure about their own bodies” even if they don't have anything to be ashamed of. It is evident that the media displays unrealistic images of beauty causing girls to feel insecure about their bodies and creates a false perception of how they should look. Due to this, women obsess so much over looking just like the “idealized” woman in the media that they create an obsession of losing weight because of lack of confidence. In the article, “The Media Drives Young Girls to Diet” by Jessica Hendrick, we see how women “diet obsessively” trying to “emulate the popular notion of beauty” that is being shown in the media.

Thus, there is a direct link to the rise of Anorexia and the media instills the importance of appearance into the culture and plants the idea in women’s minds that thin is essential.

When you think of eating disorders your mind goes to women or young girls but in truth anybody and everybody can struggle with an eating disorder. Many young girls in this day in age just have to turn on the T.v, look at a magazine to see an actor or model who has been photoshopped to look even thinner than they already are and they believe that they need to look like that as well to fit into today’s society. The author or authors, (I was unable to find who the author or authors were, I was unsure if all on the last few pages were the authors) in Facts on file, issues & controversies The name of the article, Do social and cultural factors cause eating disorders? The author(s) want to enlighten their audience on what eating disorders are. How there is more than just one type of eating disorder and how men suffer with eating disorders just as much as women do. In the article it was mentioned that some people don’t believe that it could be sports, media, fashion, or the entertainment of Hollywood that may cause these eating disorders for people. But in one section of the article girls had told researchers that they were trying to emulate television characters.

Glossy images of tall, attractive, yet excessively thin models infiltrate magazines for women in America. In fact, the Domestic Violence Sexual Assault, or Stalking research reports that “Twenty years ago the average model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman, but today’s models weight is 23 percent less than the average woman” (“How the Media Portrays Women”). American society is sending a clear message that beauty equals skinny. This American obsession to be “thin” is being unequivocally accepted by American females and capitalized on by the diet industry. The result is a society obsessed with dieting; ironically, the evidence proves that these diets actually have the adverse effect and instead are making Americans fat.

Today’s media is playing a huge role in the lives of everyday women and the way that they think about themselves and how they should look. This portrayal of unattainable beauty has effect women and young adolescent girls the most. The number one wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to be thinner, and girls as young as five have expressed fears of getting fat (Tiggemann, 1996). The medias usage of ultra thin and beautiful models are leading to eating disorders and depression and other mental disorders in women. Robin Gerber who is a motivational speaker and author says “We don’t need Afghan style burquas to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse-by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty”. The

As far back as I can remember, ever since I started puberty to my teenage years, thinness has been considered and perceived as the “ideal” and optimum standard of beauty. Thin models, especially female models, are everywhere you look. This particular look of taught skin and bones and the depiction of a women whose measurements fall far from the category of what we consider to be healthy and “normal”, is what dominates our society’s perception of beauty today. Eating disorders and our culture’s obsession with weight loss and its pressure to conform to an ideal standard of beauty are everywhere you look. They have inserted their way into our televisions, the foods we eat, the magazines we read, tv commercials, and even on the plastic mannequins that we see in our favorite clothing stores. Growing up as a child who was overweight and struggled for most of my high school years trying to achieve an ideal standard of thinness, is one of the many reasons why this topic is interesting to me.