Aristotle categorized argumentative appeals into three types: ethical appeals that appeal to character (ethos), emotional appeals that speak to our hearts and values (known to the ancient Greeks as pathos), and logical appeals that involve factual information and evidence (logos).

Ethical appeals support the credibility, moral character, and goodwill of the argument’s creator. These appeals are especially important for critical readers to recognize and evaluate. Should a respected baseball manager’s credibility in the clubhouse convince you to invest in mutual funds he promotes? Should an actress respected for her award-winning roles convince you to give to a particular charity? To identify ethical appeals in arguments, ask yourself these questions: What is the creator of the argument doing to show that he or she is knowledgeable and credible about the subject—has really done the homework on it? What sort of character does he or she build, and how? More important, is that character trustworthy? What does the creator of the argument do to show that he or she has the best interests of an audience in mind? Do those best interests match your own, and, if not, how does that alter the effectiveness of the argument?

Sample: An ethical appeal

Try to identify the ethical appeals that documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer makes in this excerpt from his “Director’s Statement” for The Act of Killing, a film in which the perpetrators of massacres in 1960s Indonesia reenact the murders they committed:

When I began developing The Act of Killing in 2005, I had already been filming for three years with survivors of the 1965–66 massacres. I had lived for a year in a village of survivors in the plantation belt outside Medan. I had become very close to several of the families there. During that time, Christine Cynn and I collaborated with a fledgling plantation workers’ union to make The Globalization Tapes, and began production on a forthcoming film about a family of survivors that begins to confront (with tremendous dignity and patience) the killers who murdered their son. Our efforts to record the survivors’ experiences—never before expressed publicly—took place in the shadow of their torturers, as well as the executioners who murdered their relatives—men who, like Anwar Congo, would boast about what they did.

—JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER

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For Multilingual Writers: Recognizing Appeals in Various Settings