e is intended to recommend a future course of action. The second is epideictic or ceremonial oratory which is meant to convey a future course of action. The thirds is forensic or legal oratory, and this is intended to provoke judgment concerning a past action (Bizzell and Herzberg 29).
Rhetoric is described by Aristotle as the faculty of observing in a given case the available means of persuasion, and in the art of persuasion, there are three factors which have to be noted: 1) the character of the speaker (ethos, or ethical appeal); 2) the frame of mind of the audience (pathos, or pathetic or emotional appeal); and 3) the actual or apparent proof of the speech itself (logos, factual statements and arguments. For a speaker to be effective, he or she must be knowledgeable about human nature and character, the emotions, and logic (Bizzell and Herzberg 145).
The traditional reading of Aristotle has seen him as having a more rigid adherence to logos, pathos, and ethos in terms of dividing artistic proofs according to the three. A more recent reading, though, suggests a hierarchical arrangement so that the three major subdivisions of artistic proof give way to two major categories, enthymeme and example. Logical, ethical, and pathetical appeals become subdivisions under both enthymeme and example. Deductive reasoning is enthymeme, and inductive reasoning is example, and logical, ethical, and pathetical appeals are part of every reasonable argument (Bizzell and Herzberg 146).
When Magic Johnson revealed that he was HIV positive and that he would retire from basketball as a result, the revelation was a shock to the public for a number of reasons. First, Magic Johnson was a well-known and well-loved sports figure whose illness would create sympathy no matter what that illness was. Second, the mere fact that a sports figure, expected to be the picture of health, would contract such a disease was a shock. Third, the fact that ...