Ethos, Logos, Pathos Paper Analysis Criteria Sheet
In this essay you will be required to select a speech that addresses a civil rights issue in some capacity. You may select any speech from any historical period as long as it connects to an issue of civil rights. You may use the actual speech by the leader/orator you have chosen for your Oral Project. For the essay you need to accomplish the following:
1. Provide a background about the rhetorical exigence of the speech. In other words, why was it necessary and pertinent for the times? Where was it given and why?
2. Define and discuss the ethos or credibility of the person delivering the discourse. How did her or his contemporaries see the person and her or his work? Make sure you provide a brief explanation of what ethos is and define some of its traits and characteristics. Then apply what you have learned to the speaker you have selected. Keep in mind you are allowed to discuss negative credibility items as well. If you notice items within the speech that contribute to the speaker’s credibility profile, you may write about this as well.
3. Define and discuss how the speaker uses pathos within the speech. What parts are designed to elicit an emotional response from the audience, and how did they accomplish this? Please make sure to define and explain what pathos is and describe some of the ways the speaker created emotion in the speech. What emotions did the speaker try to access in the minds of his or her audience?
4. Define and discuss how the speaker uses logos in the presentation (evidence and reasoning). Please make sure you define and explain what logos is and the importance of it in a speech. Then identify one or two strategies you feel are the most significant in the speech.
5. In addition to defining the terms and discussing Ethos, Logos, Pathos, analyze the speech/orator for his/her Rhetorical Skills such as alliteration, assonance, antithesis, similes and metaphors, kinds of Repetitions. See Unit #234 Viewings and hard copy of Bb Viewings lecture below.
6. Please make sure you provide a copy of the speech as part of your paper or a link to indicate where you found this.
7. For this assignment you will need a minimum of five different sources. The actual speech or text does not count as a source. Use these sources to define and explain the concepts of ethos, logos, or pathos. You may also use these to augment your section on the speech and the speaker’s background.
8. This assignment is 4-5 pages in length. It should be double spaced and typed using Times New Roman font. The Works Cited page does not count as part of the page count.
P.S: Reminder: You may include this investigation in your oral project on The Life and Times of a Famous Civil Rights Leader.
Rhetorical Stylistic Devices formulas for persuasion
Integrating style – building it into the speech around your core ideas.
Please see Bb ‘Viewings’ link.
Alliteration – repetition of consonant sounds
“Happy Home – Healthy Family – Hopeful Future” — William Clinton
“Face the Fire at Freedom’s Front.” — Ronald Reagan
Assonance – repetition of vowel sound.
There was a young fellow named Hall.
He fell in the Spring in the Fall.
T’would have been a sad thing, if he died in the Spring,
But he didn’t, he died in the Fall.
Asyndeton – Omitting normally occurring conjunctions
“Be one of the few, the proud, the marines.”
Polysyndeton – Insertion of excessive conjunctions
“We must change that deleterious environment of the 80s, that environment which and hatred and was characterized by greed and hatred and selfishness and mega-mergers and debt overhang…”
–Barbara Jordan
Anaphora – deliberate repetition of the first word or set of words in a sentence or phrase.
“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fights on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
— Winston Churchill
“To raise a happy, healthy and hopeful child, it takes a family; it takes teachers; it takes clergy; it takes business people; it takes community leaders; it takes those who protect our health and safety. It takes all of us.
— Hillary Clinton
Epistrophe – Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive phrases
“…and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“I said you’re afraid to bleed. (As) long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people. But when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed and little black girls being murdered, you haven’t got no blood.” (Also antithesis)
— Malcolm X
Symploce – Repetition of the first and last word in a clause over successive clauses
“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
— Edward Kennedy
“Much of what I say might sound bitter, but it’s the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it’s stirring up trouble, but it’s the truth. Much of what I say might sound like it is hate, but it’s the truth.”
— Malcolm X
Rule of Three pattern – step 1, step 2, step 3 with a change. Grows in terms of value and intensity – escalates the variable.
Anadiplosis – Repetition of the last word in one sentence at the beginning of the next sentence.
“Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.”
–George W. Bush, Address to Congress and the Nation, 2001
Antithesis – Pairing of contrasting words or ideas
“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, 1933
Antimetabole – A B, B A — pairing of phrases in one order and then in the reverse order
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
“But we must remember a crucial fact; east and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we’re armed because we mistrust each other.”
Appositio – Elaboration and variation of a word – taking a small idea and providing elaborated phrases
“John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a great and good President, a friend of all people of goodwill, a believer in the dignity and equality of all human beings, a fighter for justice, an apostle of peace, has been snatched from our midst by the bullet of an assassin.”
— Justice Earl Warren, Eulogy for JFK, 1963
Schesis Onomaton – Elaboration and variation of a phrase
“Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that’s a Government’s seal you’re breaking! Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what he does.”
“Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, Malcolm X Movie
Maxims – Short, pithy phrase that captures the core idea of the speech – a title given after the fact.
“This was their finest hour” – Winston Churchill, Speech to Parliament, 1940
“Tear down this wall” – Ronald Reagan, Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate, 1987
