Notes for February 16

Ethos: Developing voice

I. The concept of ethos or ethical proof: how do we argue from character and what does it mean to create voice?

A. Writing about a creative work: narrative based texts for analysis and evaluation.

B. In writing about creative work, we want to move through five steps.

1. Have a clear thesis about the work.

2. Textual support for your assertions: point to specific evidence in the work that provides support for your claims; make sure there is sufficient context to understand your interpretation.

3. Attention to the elements of work: creating dramatic scenes.

a. We look at characters: who is the story about? Who does what? How? Why?

b. Setting: what is the context for action?

c. Plot: the sequence of events in a story: what happens?

d. Themes: what the story means, the general statements that the story makes about life.

e. Style: what stylistic devices are used to create a particular tone?

f. Figures of speech/imagery can help to create a tone and meaning related to a theme.

II. “Ancient rhetoricians knew that good arguments were available to them from other sources than logos or reason” (Crowley and Hawhee 195).

A. Woodward and Denton in their book Persuasion and Influence in American Life argue that there is a difference between argumentation and persuasion; argumentation is about public interest and persuasion is about personal interest.

B. So the task in making arguments work is to think about what Roderick Hart calls the logic of persuasion.

There are six principles:

1. In persuasion, everything is rational to the behaver at the time of behavior.

2. The logic of persuasion is always saliency-driven: this is the principle that the listener will always find what is most important and immediate to be the most reasonable.

a. Salience has to also do with how close the issue runs to our own lives.

3. The logic of persuasion is audience-dependent; arguments don’t have merit unless they somehow connect to the audience.

4. The logic of persuasion is a logic of association; we reason based on how we associate different elements.

5. The logic of persuasion is often a logic of emotion; we don’t separate the head and the heart, logic and emotion.

a. F.G. Bailey argues in The Tactical Uses of Passion that the logic of emotion in persuasive arguments occurs through relationship between display of emotion and our own feelings in response to this display.

b. Emotional authenticity (Does one experience the emotion he/she says he/she is feeling?).

c. Emotional integrity (Does the person’s background give him or her the right to be this emotional on the matter?).

d. Emotional register of an argument (Is the speaker’s state of arousal too high or too low for the matter being discussed? We make judgments based on the level of control displayed by the speaker).


III. The logic of persuasion is always credibility-driven; there is no way to hear, read, or see a message without making some assessment of the speaker or author.

A. Defining some of the principles connected to ethos:

1. The notion of competence: letting audiences know that you are an expert on an issue or have relevant experience related to an issue.

2. We also talk about ethos in terms of “good judgment” or moral and emotional health; so an audience will determine that we have good judgment in the way we talk about a situation.

3. We also talk about ethos in terms of charisma, dynamism, or likability; there are some people that have a commanding presence, we want to listen to them, or we “sense” that there is something special about them.

4. Character is about great speakers putting into words what an audience cannot fully articulate.

5. Character may also be used by advocacy groups to gain legitimacy.

6. Character may be about rhetorical/social status: how we attempt to “save face” if our reputation is at risk.

B. What is important to recognize in relation to these different elements of ethos is the interplay between our personal voice and our public voice, crafted in relation to an audience.

C. We can make sense of this relationship between the personal and the public through Edwin Black’s notion of the Second Persona, a concept Black develops in 1970 in relation to rhetorical criticism and more specifically, the concept of public address.

1. Edwin Black pioneered his idea of an implied audience; a speaker meets an actual audience and in the process attempts to move, to teach, and to please.

2. Black argues that together we create this second (and perhaps even third) persona through discourse—symbolic interaction.

3. The Second Persona thus defines how we “share worlds” through symbols.

4. Michael J. Hyde argues that ethos is thus literally a place where we “dwell.”

5. Ethos, for Hyde, thus defines an “essential relationship that exists among the self, communal existence, discourse,” and even notions of the Divine (xiv).

6. How do we encourage an audience to “dwell” with us; or how do we create “dwelling places” that people will want to enter and consider what we have to offer?

D. These questions have to do with narrative “voice,” and specifically our writing “voice.”

E There are different ways to create voice, involving levels of intimacy or distance depending on the “grammatical person” of the author.

1. First- and Second-Person discourse “are ordinarily used in speech when small groups of people are conversing” (Crowley and Hawhee 217).

2. This personal tone helps to establish intimacy or bring an audience closer to an author; using “I language” and in plural form: “we.”

a. Personal narrative helps to situate meaning in the lived context: I feel this and think this and know this.

b. Personal narrative makes the private public, which has the power to potentially unmask things we feel, think or believe, but can’t yet articulate.

3. Another voice is the second person, which is “you” language; “you should” do this” or “take this course of action.”

4. Finally, the third person objective voice functions to deflect attention away from the personal life of the author or the audience, and focus attention on the argument.

5 Often we see a combination of voices used in arguments depending on the forum; personal and objective intersect to keep an audience engaged and listening to arguments.

6. Take a look at an article published in O Magazine last Fall 2009; http://www.oprah.com/world/Susan-Klebolds-O-Magazine-Essay-I-Will-Never-Know-Why/2.

7. She moves from first and second person to third person at times; evaluate how she uses her voice and what you believe she has the authority talk about.