Assignment
Part 1: Ethos
1. Who are you? How do you want your audience to see you?
2. What gives you the authority to speak?
3. What is your experience with the topic?
4. What are the limits of your experience/knowledge?
5. How invested are you in the situation?
6. Do you have your audience's best interest mind? (This shouldn't just be about you)
7. Can you establish common ground between you and your audience (shared values)?
8. Don't come across boastful
9. Don't come across too passive
10. Aim for respectfully assertive
11. How does the audience know that you are fair-minded?
Part 2: Pathos
1. Why should your audience invest in the subject?
2. What specifically do you want them to feel and why?
3. What does this feeling accomplish?
4. Details put your audience in the desired situation
5. Too many details can be overkill or may hurt your desired ethos
6. Be conscious of word choice: consider the effect of colloquialism, swear words, imagery, etc.
7. What level of intimacy do you want to establish with your audience? Why?
8. When does an emotional appeal become too emotional or manipulative?
9. Balance Pathos with Logos
Part 3: Logos
1. Pursue a clear line of reasoning
2. Be aware of the assumptions your reasoning is based on
3. Does your audience share the values inherent in your assumption?
4. Look at the situation from multiple angles
5. Anticipate and address the counterargument
6. Emphasize your main argument
7. Be aware of debatable claims
8. Support these claims with evidence, which you must interpret for your audience
9. Is your evidence appropriate for your target audience?
10. Be aware of alternate evidence that may contradict or complicate what you have provided.