Rhetorical Invention: A Personal Perspective

In rhetoric, we have to invent everything from something. In modern terminology, everything we create and see is a remix of something else that has been presented or created in the past. With this basic idea, we can pull together countless examples where ethos, pathos, and logos, or a different combination among these, have come together to create something new to catch the eye of a specific audience.

When it comes to crafting rhetorical appeals, I draw upon my audience and my surroundings to use them to invent my rhetorical approach. By doing so, I am drawing my more visual and hands-on audience members into what I am trying to achieve or rally support for. For my oratory participants, I have to use not only the characteristics of my voice but, also, my demeanor to present my words as viable truths in retrospect to my main goal. For example, inventing rhetoric for most audiences requires a bit of logos, a dash of ethos and a whole lot of pathos. For most audiences, pathos is the key factor that turns heads when choosing between two factually viable appeals. In my work, the pathos is the most important part that I focus on, so long as it is not a purely academic topic.

While we may seem to think that our persuasive nature has to have one specific focus, we have to have multiple to hold our stock as a viable candidate in every and any variety of discussions. Pathos is for not if we don’t have our ethos or credibility as a speaker to accompany it.