Ethos

Ethos can be defined as the character or disposition of a community, group, or person. Throughout my education, I have really only discussed ethos on a literary level, so it's interesting to look at it as a professional writer. After checking out a couple articles it seems that authors, just as anyone else, establishes their credibility by using examples, statistics, graphs, other outside sources, ect. However, I think a main way that many poeple have established their credibility and are able to use ethos comes in a way that they sometimes may not even recognize. I think that titles, jobs, or experiences that one has had in their past can boast what others think about someone's intelligence. For instance, you would probably take someone's word on a subject automatically if you came to find out that they had a degree in that field from Harvard, rather then someone who may have graduated from a smaller, less known college. Also, if you were looking to have a bridge built in your area and you begin asking different engineers how to go about it, you will probably take the word of the engineer who has built 10 bridges rather than the engineer who has built 1. Basically, as much as examples and statistics can help, I also think that alot of established ethos comes quietly through a person's previous (work)experience and education.

Enthymemes, Examples, Maxims, and Signs

After searching through a Sports Illustrated magazine for any use of the different proofs, an ad located off to the side of a March Madness article really caught my eye, and I feel like instantly noticed its use of a dubious premise within an enthymeme. The ad reads as so:

"To crash with a Volvo is extremely safe.. ...if you're sitting in a Saab."

This a dubious premise to the enthymeme because it is suggesting that all Saab vehicles are going to be safer during an accident than any Volvo. It makes you think that the ad is for Volvo until it flips it on its head and humorously fakes you out a little bit. Because safety is so important when considering a vehicle, Saab made a great move here by not only increasing the public's opinion of their safety ratings, but also putting down a competitor at the same time.

Kairos

The only magazines my 4 roomates and I typically have around the house are Sports Illusstrated and Maxim, so for this assignment I chose to use the more interesting, and less risque, SI articles. Within the SI issue I found a great article on steroid use in baseball, more specfically the case of Alex Rodriguez. Interestingly enough, I found an article on the same subject in one of the more recent Maxim issues, what a coincedence right?

Baseball and its athletes have certainly been under the microscope lately when it comes to steroid scandals. With reports coming out left and right about different abusers and "cheaters," one would think that simply coming clean before-hand would still hold an athlete in high respect to their fans, however, most players are still choosing to keep things hush-hush. Because they choose to let things play out in this manner, there is alot of kairos dependent on the media to be able to cover such allegations that come out against players just like Alex Rodriguez. Both of the articles that I read had come out within a 2 week period after A-Rod admitted to his 3-year use of banned substances. I thought this was interesting lack of kairos because both magazines are monthly and they were forced to wait for their next publication in order to print any opinions their writers had or any insight they may have had either. They basically missed out on the most opportune moment to print the articles, which was basically the next morning. Other stories came immediately from everywhere whether it was ESPN or Yahoo Sports or even newspapers around the U.S. and even in the Dominican Republic.

The only way these articles could accurately draw succesfully on kairos was to include new information that other articles had lacked due their immediate printing, therefore the two articles I read ended up benefiting from waiting a little while because they were then able to add much more insight and inside information and interviews and the like to really back up their story and to create a much more interesting article on this specific subject in general.

Rhetorical Activity

As I picked up the newspaper to try find some use of rhetoric, it hit me immediately that the political section would be full of it. Politicians use rhetoric almost every day, whether they choose to use facts to back up their arguements against other running mates or whether they use "empty promises" to persuade citizens to vote for them or to aid their cause in general. For example, the article I read on President Obama's budget plan even contained a section which was titled "the assumptions" and a section right after that titled "reality check." I found this interesting because it was basically putting both the made up and the factual rhetoric arguement right beside eachother. They actually read like this...

"The assumptions: Reduce the deficit by $637 billion over 10 years by letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 for singles making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000."

"Reality check: Letting the tax cuts expire has a good chance of happening. But the savings that achieves could be undercut if two other revenue raising efforts don't pan out."


It is as if actually calling yourself out on empty promises is a whole new strategy to convince your peers of something. If you call yourself out on having made empty promises with new preomises of filling the previous ones, you could essentially re-persuade a group of people with the same emtpy promises. Perhaps twice if you choose not to fulfill them again! Ha!