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Assignment #2

Part One:
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1.) Ethos is the authority appeal. To persuade an audience of your argument, it is important to be researched. This knowledge will help you to sound both credible and confident.
Pathos is the emotional appeal, it lets your audience know that you sympathize with them, allowing you to gain sympathy for your own argument. As with all of the appeals, it can be overdone and cause the audience to lose faith in the argument altogether.
Logos i s the logic appeal. Using research to provide support in the form of examples and explanations is important to help reason with the audience. An argument is much more effect if it does invite the audience to think and possibly challenge what they may already believe.
2.) Some good strategies for appealing to the reader’s trust in authority are to research the topic so that the argument is informed, and for the tone of the argument to be authoritative. It is advantageous for you to get your readers to trust you as an authority because your audience will be more likely to be open minded and accepting of your argument.
3.) Some good strategies for appealing to emotion when you’re formulating a reasonable argument are to prove sympathetic to the audience’s ideas or values so that the audience themselves are more likely to view you as a credible source. For example, if I wanted to raise awareness for the adoption of infants within America, I might present several pictures or cases of infants that were in need of adoption.
4.) It is also important not to overdo your statements or examples that appeal to emotion, as it can be overpowering to the desired topic. As with the example above, presenting too many cases or details of the babies and their adoptions could cause the focus of my topic to be overshadowed, thus rendering it ineffective.
5.) Logos can be used to build a strong argument by providing plenty of strong examples for your topic. It can also build your argument when you explain your examples or terms to that the audience is sure to understand the information. Logos is especially important to building your argument because it provides the audience with a more in depth explanation as to why you think and feel the way you do about your topic.
6.) Ethos, pathos, and logos are not at all separate from each other. They each form an important part of an argument. Without one or the other, these appeals fall short of the presentation needed to persuade the audience to consider and perhaps embrace the point of view you’re offering. If you were to give the same argument about the adoption of infants, but were only to provide facts and emotional testimony, your readers would have no logic or explanation as to why they should take your point of view. Similarly, any two of the appeals could not stand without the remaining.

Part Two:
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“A Global Epidemic in the Making?” – Howard Markel

In the essay A Global Epidemic in the Making, the reader is quickly provided with a pathos appeal about how epidemics used to be contracted, and easily spread without much hope for cure. The author, Howard Markel, then applies the idea of an epidemic to some of today’s vices, such as alcohol, tobacco, and even links it to obesity. The following paragraphs in the article state examples and explanations in a true logos appeal, giving the reader every reason to see and believe that obesity is a threat for themselves, all the while maintaining some pathos appeal.
Throughout the entire piece, the author maintains an authoritative stance, which is not hard for him as he is a professor at the University of Michigan in the subject in which he is presenting. Each time a term is defined technically, there is a subsequent explanation so that it can be understood by the entire audience. All in all, the author makes good use of the three appeals, putting together a well thought-out argument. The argument is written authoritatively, appeals to your emotions, and is presented with plenty of facts and statistics which are all clearly defined to help you to understand the point of view in which they are written.

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