What are the three main components to every argument? Well, I'm glad you asked! They are Aristotle's three appeals: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.
Ethos:
Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is a means of convincing someone of the character of credibility of the persuader. A trick for this is ethos = evidence. If you have good ethos, you have good credibility and evidence. Examples of ethos are statistics, expert opinions, facts, and interviews.
Pathos:
Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. Any time you will use imagery, persuasive techniques and general appeals (talked about after Module 1), and any time of information that makes the audence FEEL, that is pathos.
Logos:
Logos is an appeal to logic, and is a way of persuasing an audience by reason. Any type if inductive reasoning and analogies work for this. So, for example, you may have just listed a statistic in your argument (ethos) to support your claim. Before moving on, you need to use your own logical reasoning to explian your statistic, in your own words, and why that statistic makes sense and supports your argument. Without your own reasoning and explanation, the audience may become lost.
Without each one of these components, an argument can have a flaw and become in danger of losing during a debate. Each appeal is necessary and should be equally weighted, meaning there should be an equal ratio of all three. There shouldn't be 90% ethos in your argument and only 5% oathos and 5% logos.
What I normally tell my students when they are constructing their debates and writing them out is to get three different colored highlighters and to highlight each different appeal so they can visually see how much of each they have, and if all three appeals are used evenly.
