Advertising and the Media : Week 5 What is the rhetorical appeal?

What is the rhetorical situation?

Ethos - The ethical, personal appeal (Do I trust this person, product, brand?)
Pathos - The emotional appeal (what are our biggest emotional draws?)
Logos - The logic appeal (does this make sense?)

Logos refers to the use of logical appeals. These are the facts, statistics, and examples used in the ad. For example, we might see an ad for toothpaste that promises to make our teeth “40% whiter than the other leading brands.” This line appeals to our ability to reason. It seems to make sense that the toothpaste must be effective if it works that much better than other toothpaste brands. Therefore, this statistic helps to persuade us that we should buy the toothpaste.

Ethos refers to the ethical appeals used by advertisers. These appeals work in ads by calling upon the credibility and the reputation of a particular company or spokesperson. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps signed an endorsement deal with Under Armour in 2010. When we see Phelps in an advertisement for Under Armour, then, we might feel persuaded to buy these products because we believe that if a remarkable athlete like Phelps trusts Under Armour, then we should, too. We might also see ethos working when a company shows that it is credible or trustworthy. Dawn dishwashing liquid advertisements have shown their product being used to clean wildlife affected by oil spills, and the company claims to donate money to wildlife charities. Seeing the goodwill of the company could make consumers trust Dawn and, therefore, this appeal helps to persuade consumers to purchase the products.

Pathos is the emotional appeal. Advertisers use pathos to evoke specific emotions in the audience. Pathos tends to be used quite often in advertisements, as emotions are easily stirred in most target audiences through vivid images and touching stories. Consider the emotions consumers may feel when they watch a commercial about abused animals. Often times, these commercials feature with sad, mistreated animals, who appear lonely and helpless. Sad music often accompanies these images, and the effect is that consumers may feel distressed, angry, or even guilty. The advertisers stir the emotions of the viewers in the hope that viewers will take action by donating money and/or adopt a pet.

Many ads will use a combination of all three rhetorical appeals to construct their arguments. However, some ads emphasize ethos, while other ads mostly make use of pathos. Still other ads may tend to have a strong use of logos. All ads will vary somewhat in their use of rhetorical appeals. Much of the strategy depends upon the target audience being persuaded and product being marketed.

Logical Fallacies

Slippery Slope - if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.

The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand, and instead shifts attention to extreme hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened to simply post hoc fallacy. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc ("with this, therefore because of this"), in which two things or events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection.

The following is a simple example:

The rooster crows immediately before sunrise; therefore the rooster causes the sun to rise.

Appeal to Authority - because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true.

It's important to note that this fallacy should not be used to dismiss the claims of experts, or scientific consensus. Appeals to authority are not valid arguments, but nor is it reasonable to disregard the claims of experts who have a demonstrated depth of knowledge unless one has a similar level of understanding and/or access to empirical evidence. However it is, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not.

Bandwagon - popularity or the fact that many people do something as an attempted form of validation.

If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate this popular belief. The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity.