Ethos, Logos, Pathos: The Appeals in Politics
Hanako Boucher
While ethos, logos, and pathos are oftentimes seen as mere methods of appeal in rhetorical discourse, they play a crucial role in rhetorical invention as well. This is quite clearly on display in the political climate of today. Politicians depend heavily on the three overlapping appeals to build rhetoric for their purposes. This rhetoric eventually influences who you will vote for, but more broadly speaking, it is ultimately playing on who and what you choose to believe, and politicians know this starts from the very beginning while inventing the rhetoric.
At first glance, politics seems to be almost entirely people-based — there is no politics without people (whether it be politicians or their constituents) building political relationships. This brings to mind ethos, the person-based appeal. A politician may indeed sculpt their likability at a rally, but much of the rhetorical invention of who they are is established outside of direct rhetorical discourse. Audiences know the experience of a candidate based off of the amount of time they have in the political realm (or in other relevant spheres). That time isn’t all spent in a rhetorical situation, participating in rhetorical discourse. Candidates also shape their overall image as they live day to day, so that even as they are outside of a rhetorical situation, they are inventing and establishing the ethos they’ll use when finally directly participating in rhetorical discourse.
Logos is also a victim of the thought that it can only be utilized in an immediate rhetorical situation. However, in order for a politician’s logos to be delivered confidently to the people when participating in rhetorical discourse, that logos must have been established already and practiced outside of that discourse. The reasons for policy must be discussed outside of the debate room, and facts and figures must be memorized somewhere other than the podium.
Pathos also appears at first glance to only apply in rhetorical discourse. And indeed, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is most effective when the rhetorical discourse is actually being practiced, and a politician can play directly off of the displayed emotions of their audience. But in order to invent their rhetoric and come up with various angles to approach an argument, they already have to be putting in the work to determine which type of emotional tone might work best right away. That way they will have already begun with an established rhetoric that effectively utilized feeling to appeal to the audience.
Politicians are masters of rhetoric and rhetorical invention in a more conscious way than the ordinary person. Much more of their time than ours is spent on learning what kind of emotional appeals voters will be responsive to, or thinking about the ways specific words affect our minds, or stockpiling knowledge and time in the political circuit — in all of this, they are attempting to control every aspect of the rhetorical situations they will encounter in order to make the outcome favorable to themselves. This is their mastery of ethos, logos, and pathos at work in inventing the most appropriate rhetoric, not just in carrying it out as rhetorical discourse.
