Please watch Harris’ and Trump’s closing statements from this week’s presidential debate and mark down when you see them using ethos, pathos, and logos. This is not about who you think is right or wrong, but about how they are using appeals to credibility, emotion, and logic to reinforce their arguments.
Here are brief definitions of ethos, pathos, and logos, which we will discuss in more detail on Monday: Ethos (Speaker) – Conveys the speaker’s credibility, most often by referencing their experience, character, morals, and other personal details. Pathos (Audience) – Appeals to the audience’s emotions, often through anecdotes or strong language (e.g. respect, pride, shameful, broken…) Logos (Subject) – Appeals to the audience’s logic and reasoning, most often through references to concrete facts and statistics.
Once you have watched both speeches and listed instances of ethos, pathos, and logos, write your own speech or letter applying for a certain role. This role could be the president of the United States or the president of a certain work or school organization. It could be an application for a job you want in real life or for a completely made up role (king of the universe, captain of the quidditch team, etc.) – whatever is most interesting and/or useful to you. Make sure, however, that you have a specific audience in mind and that you try to use ethos, pathos, and logos in your speech / letter. Please upload both your notes on the closing statements and your own speech!
