Religious Inequalities

Chapter Six: Approaching

Timothy P. Goss and Alexander V. Ames, Ph.D.

Ethos

If one day you have the chance to wander the halls of Grantham, you might see a sign by one of the offices bearing a quotation from Dale Carnegie: “Begin with praise and honest appreciation” (Carnegie, 2009, pg. 268). While this quotation has likely been chosen by the owner of the sign to serve as a reminder of how we should treat our students and our colleagues, its message also applies to the way we have been looking at writing throughout this course. When writing, it is important, even vital, to consider for whom it is we are writing. This concept of praising and appreciating our readers aligns itself with the Rogerian style of argument which we have studied previously in this course, but it also touches upon what ancient rhetoricians, such as Aristotle, called ethos. You will recall that we touched briefly on the concept of ethos in our previous readings. Ethos is one of three Classical rhetorical appeals we will investigate in this chapter. Ethos refers to the perceived authority of the author and/or his or her sources of information (e.g. those supposed experts whom the author quotes in support of his or her claim). Yet, when we attribute ethos to an author it doesn’t simply mean that this author knows what he or she is writing about, but rather, it depends on the author’s ability to convince his or her readers that he or she has their best interest in mind when presenting their solution to the problem being argued. At the beginning of this course, for instance, we began to sell you an idea. Our goal was (and is) to convince you that the information and skills you’ll gather in this course are worth your time and money. Moreover, we hope we have persuaded you that by following the prescribed course structure, you will learn things that are necessary for you to succeed throughout your college career and in your personal and professional life. Of course, the above aims are...