Dear Colleague Jens Kjeldsen,

I think logos (logic) is the element that needs to be shored up more than ethos.

Ethos can match people's preconceived and bigoted ideas so that this kind of ethos seems perfectly valid in its bubble or silo. Ad hominem attacks back and forth tend to cancel out. Besides, ad hominem--looking for flaws in ethos --amounts to a local fallacy when the logical evidence is not given enough weight.

Outside the bubble voices cannot break in to damage trust in that leader's ethos. There are always places to poke around and damage another side with ad hominem assaults against that side's ethos.

More rhetorically and even ethically effective is to work on re-developing a respect in students for logical cases. This is less person dependent. Think of a courtroom. We d not spend much time on the character of the two attorneys. We focus more on the logic of their cases.

They may have personal flaws outside such as drinking too much or being too much attracted to too many romantic partners.

In the court none of this matters. We are focusing upon logic and the evidence in the case. (If the too much attracted to too many partners lawyer ends up on court that is a different court for divorce and the case there deals with this evidence.)

Dear Gloria,

thanks for your reply. Of course you are right about logos - but still, Aristotle (who really wrote a logos-rhetoric), maintains that ethos is "the most effective means of persuasion" of the three classical appeals. Writers like Eugene Garver more or less sees logos as part of ethos: If you do not believe the speaker, you will not believe what is said. Anyhow, my question remains: What is the most important contemporary text on ethos and credibility?

Hello Jens,

I have no suggestions for a text, but I would like to say that in my documentary course (Bill Nichols considers documentaries a kind of "audiovisual speeches") I often emphasize the ethos of the documentary maker -- often the maker's "track record" (including financial backing by serious/public service institutions) help constitute his/her ethos.

Within relevance theory Sperber et al. (2010) in Mind & Language 25(4): 359–393, have added the importance of reliability as a factor to take into account within or next to relevance.

Cheers, Charles

Good point, Colleague Jens,

Ernest Bormann's text The Force of Fantasy deals with images of ethos. This form of communication theory talks about how ethos is created for audiences, rather than "finding" it somewhere pre-fabricated.

Thanks Charles Forceville and Gloria Lee Mcmillan - good points

I wonder what Brian L. Ott would say on the question of ethos and credibility?

As a person with a PhD, dissertation entitled Schemes and Tropes as Organizational Devices in 16th and 17th Century British Literature as well as a person with a M.A. in Theatre Arts, emphasis playwriting, and as a writer of verse for over 60 years (caveat, I was run out of the academic world because I emphasized the needs of the students to learn how to think as well as express themselves to others) and run out of the creative fields because I wrote in, and toyed with, historical forms, I would answer this question by saying that everyone uses the "tricks of the trade" and that is what they are -- tricks, tricks that sometimes works but more often fail. Using old terms that have acquired new and sometimes contradictory meanings are not useful: ethos, pathos and logos. What do you mean exactly when you use those terms? What you need to do is to get rid of jargon and address the problems you are interested in realistically and not theoretically. I have worked on a treatise about metrical use in verse since the 1990s. All of my research into academic discussions proved that the people who wrote them knew nothing about spoken versus written problems and now versification is based on aural/oral dimensions in order to be effective. You leave out the actual concept of what verse is and rely on some theory and all you wind up with is theory without authentication. I once attended a conference that had Richard Wilbur and James Dickey speak. They both read their verse. Wilbur bored me to tears and Dickey excited me. I then went to their works and Wilbur often bored mere until he wrote "lyrics" for Candide and Dickey surprised me because his verbal dexterity in his performance did not show up in his versification, which was dull. He did not know how to transfer what he heard onto paper so that others could sense what he head even if they did not listen to him recite. When I write verse, I phrase my words in such a way that one is forced to follow the rhythm I want my words to give meaning to. The words basically force you to read them aloud and once you do, you become caught up in what the words are saying and implying as they are put together into a construction that reveals a meaning. This is true for most communication. If you have something to say, you must say it in a manner which conveys what you want said to be understood by. This is no longer taught in school. It was rarely taught when I was in school long long ago. This is why people always make the excuse, "You misunderstood me. That is not what I said." Aside from people deliberately misreading or mishearing -- which is a constant in our times as well, it is often because the speaker or writer really has not said what he or she meant to say effectively enough for people to understand him or her as they wanted to be understood. This is what you need to get people to do these days, not worry about ethos, pathos and logos.