220 CHAPTER 8 | FRom ETHos To Logos: APPEALing To YouR REAdERsSteps to Appealing to Ethos■^1 establish that you have good judgment. Identify an issue your
readers will agree is worth addressing, and demonstrate that you
are fair-minded and have the best interests of your readers in
mind when you address it.■^2 Convey to readers that you are knowledgeable. Support your
claims with credible evidence that shows you have read widely on,
thought about, and understand the issue.■^3 show that you understand the complexity of the issue. Demon-
strate that you understand the variety of viewpoints your readers
may bring — or may not be able to bring — to the issue.appealing to pathos
An appeal to pathos recognizes that people are moved to action by their
emotions as well as by reasonable arguments. In fact, pathos is a vital part
of argument that can predispose readers one way or another. Do you want
to arouse readers’ sympathy? Anger? Passion? You can do that by knowing
what readers value.
Appeals to pathos are typically indirect. You can appeal to pathos by
using examples or illustrations that you believe will arouse the appropriate
emotions and by presenting them using an appropriate tone.
To acknowledge that writers play on readers’ emotions is not to
endorse manipulative writing. Rather, it is to acknowledge that effective
writers use all available means of persuasion to move readers to agree with
them. After all, if your thoughtful reading and careful research have led
you to believe that you must weigh in with a useful insight on an important
issue, it stands to reason that you would want your argument to convince
your readers to believe as strongly in what you assert as you do.
For example, if you genuinely believe that the conditions some fami-
lies are living in are abysmal and unfair, you want your readers to believe
it too. And an effective way to persuade them to believe as you do, in addi-
tion to convincing them of the reasonableness of your argument and of
your own good character and judgment, is to establish a kind of emotional
common ground in your writing — the common ground of pathos.■ (^) show that You Know what Your Readers Value
Let’s consider some of the ways James Loewen signals that he knows what
his readers value.
In the first place, Loewen assumes that readers feel the same way he
does: Educated people should know that the United States has a class
structure despite the democratic principles that the nation was founded
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