Per our discussion in class today, here’s some more thoughts/explanations/examples on ethos. I’ll write another post about pathos later, but this got a bit long so I decided to do them separately.

Ethos

Ethos is the credibility/reliability/trustworthiness (or PERCEIVED credibility/reliability/trustworthiness) of the speaker.

The story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is a fable about ethos. Because the boy cries “Wolf!” even when there is no wolf so many times, the villagers don’t believe him when there actually is a wolf. He ruined his ethos by lying and pranking them.

In professional settings, I often don’t have a lot of ethos, because I’m young and don’t have my PhD (yet!!). So in order to convince people that I know what I’m talking about, I may choose to dress extra professionally, talk extra formally, or make a point of mentioning the experience and qualifications that I do have. Think about a resume– that’s a genre that basically only uses ethos. It’s just a list of all the things you’ve done that make you good for a job.

For example, on the first day of class when I was introducing myself to you, I told you I have a master’s degree in English and am studying for my PhD. I also told you that I taught at NJCU last year– I was trying to establish my ethos (and why you should trust my English/writing/rhetoric knowledge) by explaining my prior experience and training.

Trump and Ethos

Trump is an interesting person to analyze when we think about ethos. During the election, many people who supported Trump said they liked him because he was a successful businessman, so he knows how to run things. Trump’s reputation as a rich person (and owner of a business) made some people trust/believe that he would be a good president.

People who didn’t like Trump would say, “But he has no experience in politics” or “Running a business is different from running a government, so that doesn’t matter.” They did not feel like he had a lot of ethos.

Now, people who don’t like Trump will say, “He lies all the time about everything” — he has no ethos! If he lies, why would you trust him about any given piece of information? Trump supporters say that Trump has a lot of ethos, but the media is not reliable– they say the media has no ethos because they are out to get Trump even if it means lying.

Examples from Persuasion Activity

When we were playing our Rhetoric $$ game, you often didn’t believe each other when people said they needed the dollar to buy X. AJ said he needed it for subway fare because he isn’t in ACE, and the class didn’t believe him. I tried to lend him my ethos by confirming that he really isn’t in ACE, but that didn’t work either! Even though he was telling the truth, because he hadn’t sufficiently established his ethos with the class, his persuasion technique didn’t work.

Other people tried to make trades, like “I’ll do your homework if you give me the dollar.” That didn’t work either, because the audience didn’t believe that the speaker would follow through on their promise. Failed ethos!

Ethos is not about whether or not someone is ACTUALLY saying true information. It’s about whether or not their audience PERCEIVES them to be telling the truth.

Ethos and Research/Your Writing

Let’s pretend I want to write a scholarly paper about Black Panther and its significance to African American readers.  I’ve only seen the movie once, I haven’t read any of the comics, I’m not part of the fandom, I don’t really know much about comics in general or about African American literature in general, and I’m not African American myself. So I have basically no ethos! I can tell you my opinion about Black Panther, but you have no reason to trust my opinion more than anybody else’s.

In contrast, Professor Jonathan Gray (here at John Jay and at the Graduate Center)  could just say his opinion about Black Panther and it would mean a lot, because he has a lot of ethos. He is a professor with a PhD whose specialities are African American literature, pop culture, and comics. He has written books and articles about these topics. He has a lot of knowledge not only about Black Panther specifically but about related topics in history and culture. He is personally African American and a comics fan, so he can speak from his own personal experience and feelings about Black Panther too.

So one way I could boost my own ethos is by citing Jonathan. My opinion might not mean much by itself, but if someone with a lot of ethos on this topic like Jonathan agrees with me, you might trust my analysis more!

For your research projects, you all have at least a little knowledge about your topics, but probably not a lot. You are not experts. So you find information written by experts instead. You boost your own ethos by showing that you are filling in the gaps in your knowledge by seeking out reliable information. As a writer, you’re saying, “You can trust me, because I worked really hard to find true information from reliable sources.”