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Ethos, Pathos & Logos: The Three Rhetorical Appeals
IB MYP Year 5 · Language & Literature · Unit 2: Persuasive Writing & Rhetoric | The Art of Persuasion
📋 What You Will Learn
- Define the three classical rhetorical appeals — ethos , pathos , and logos — and explain what each targets in the audience
- Identify each appeal in unseen persuasive texts using precise textual evidence (Criterion A: Analysing)
- Analyse how a writer deploys an appeal for a specific purpose and audience, commenting on its effect — not just its label
- Explain how the three appeals work in combination to build a more powerful persuasive argument than any single appeal alone
- Deliberately use all three appeals in your own persuasive writing to increase its impact and reach (Criterion C: Producing Text)
- Evaluate when an appeal becomes manipulative rather than genuinely persuasive — a critical Criterion A skill
🔍 Guiding Question When someone tries to change your mind — a politician, an advertiser, a campaigner, even a character in a novel — which part of you are they really targeting: your reason, your feelings, or your trust? And does it matter which part they choose?
🌍 Why This Matters Every day you are surrounded by persuasion: social-media campaigns, news opinion pieces, school debates, charity appeals, political speeches, product advertisements. The ability to identify what is persuading you — and how — is one of the most powerful critical tools you can possess. In MYP Language & Literature, understanding ethos, pathos, and logos sits at the heart of both analysing non-literary texts (Criterion A) and crafting your own effective persuasive writing (Criterion C). The global context of Fairness and Development pushes us further: whose voices carry authority? Whose emotions are amplified by the media? Whose logic is treated as credible, and whose is dismissed? These questions are embedded in every rhetorical appeal you will encounter.
1 · The Rhetorical Triangle: An Overview
📖 Definition — Rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of using language to persuade, inform, or motivate an audience. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle identified three primary modes of persuasion in his treatise Rhetoric (c. 350 BCE), which he called pisteis (proofs or means of persuasion). Together they form the rhetorical triangle : three angles from which any persuasive act can be understood and analysed.
Aristotle argued that a speaker could move an audience in three ways: by establishing their own trustworthiness ( ethos ), by stirring the audience's emotions ( pathos ), and by presenting sound reasoning and evidence ( logos ). The triangle is not a hierarchy — no single appeal is automatically superior to the others. Effective persuasion usually blends all three, calibrating the mix to fit the specific rhetorical situation : the purpose, the audience, the context, and the medium.
| Appeal | Greek origin | Targets in the audience | Core question it answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethos | ēthos — character | The audience's trust | "Why should I believe you?" |
| Pathos | pathos — feeling | The audience's emotions | "Why should I care about this?" |
| Logos | logos — word / reason | The audience's rational judgment | "Is this argument actually sound?" |
🔗 Analogy — The Handle, the Key, and the Frame Think of the audience's resistance as a door. Ethos is the handle — it gives you permission to approach; without it, no one lets you near the door. Pathos is the key — it opens the emotional lock that sits between the audience and action. Logos is the frame — it tells the audience that the door leads somewhere real and solid, not off a cliff. A skilled persuader needs all three: handle, key, and frame working together.
2 · Ethos — The Appeal to Credibility and Authority
📖 Definition — Ethos Ethos is the appeal to the writer's or speaker's character, credibility, and authority . It asks the audience to trust the source before trusting the argument. Ethos can be built through professional qualifications, lived experience, shared values, institutional affiliation, a fair and balanced tone, or even through precision and command of language itself.
How to spot ethos in a text
- Credentials and expertise: "As a surgeon with thirty years' experience…" or "The World Health Organisation reports…"
- Personal experience: "I have lived through this. I know what it costs." — authority derived from proximity to the issue
- Shared values and solidarity: "We, as parents, understand the weight of this responsibility…" — the writer aligns themselves with the audience's identity
- Institutional endorsement: citing expert consensus or aligning with trusted, named bodies
- Tone and register: a measured, formal, precise register signals competence before a single piece of evidence is offered
- Fair-minded concession: acknowledging the opposing view before dismantling it —