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Don’t Be Boring

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Your speeches are boring. Did I just say that? Have I implied that your rhetorical ventures are utterly boring? Well, yes.    The first piece of a speech, as taught within the scope of Rhetoric, is your ‘Introduction’. This is a critical part in your speech, as it sets the mood for your audience. Your first few words determine how your audience perceives you.    Let me be clear about this. The ‘Introduction’, in a speech, is the first part of your ‘Delivery’ (another important part of your speech). You must captivate your audience with your Introduction.    Of course when I give this advice, I assume you already know of the importance of knowing your audience. The first step that must be taken before you even invent your speech (I say ‘Invent’ because of the part of Rhetoric called ‘Invention’), is understanding your audience. What sort of culture(s) do they live in? What do all of your audience members have in common? Are you addressing a crowd of Southern, G
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How to Create Ethos

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     We’ve already discussed what ethos is, and why it’s important. Now, we’ll fully discuss the techniques used to evoke it.       (As a side-note, don’t expect to be able to implement every one of these ideas at once. Utilizing these techniques is a process that takes time.)      Remember that there are two types of ethos, Observed Ethos and Evoked Ethos. Observed ethos has to do with the way the audience perceives you, but it isn't something you deliberately create for the purpose of persuasion. Evoked ethos has to do specifically with what you say about your background and authority.       Controlling your perceived ethos is fairly simple, because the rules have already been set for you by society. Follow the dress codes at events, dress yourself neatly, and make sure your clothes are clean and free of stains. We constantly judge people for their appearance, even if it’s subconscious, so control this for your advantage.      Although it should go without saying, make s
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Why Ethos?

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   I was recently at a reunion for an online school I had taken classes at for the 2016-'17 school year, and as you can imagine, meeting people "in real life" after only having known them from the internet is a very strange thing. I think I can safely assume that we all have at least one person in our lives that we've known online for a certain amount of time, and then later met them in the real world.    While at this reunion, more than half of the people who met me for the first time had the initial reaction in the form of a certain nickname: "Falafel". They had known me under that name from the internet, it was a name bestowed upon me for the purpose (I'm assuming) of actually being able to call me by a name that can be fully spelled out, since my last name is Pfohl (hard to spell, right?). So in the words Jack used in his post, I had both the Invented Ethos (the nickname Falafel), and my Perceived Ethos ("hey, it's Falafel! that funny d
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What is Ethos?

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     Have you ever seen a speaker who is obviously unprepared and looking unprofessional? What about an athlete who endorses a sporting goods product? What about a business which has a dress code for it’s employees? All of these occurrences are based in the Aristotelean idea of ethos.      In order to fully understand ethos, we have to reach back to the roots of classical rhetoric.  Aristotle, in his book Ars Rhetorica , enumerated three modes of persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos was considered logical proof, such as statistics, data, and other types of formal reasoning. Pathos is an emotional appeal, like when a commercial sets a particular emotional mood that’s persuasive. But ethos is more difficult to define.       In his typical wordy style, Aristotle defines ethos as persuasion “achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.” To break that down a bit further, it is the way the audience feels about a s
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Making Use of Opportunity

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    I've been wrestling with the concept of "Opportunity".  What is Opportunity?    A quick search on Google will get you this definition: " a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. "  I feel as though God has given me a ton of opportunity over these last few months, based on this definition. Not only did he give me the opportunity to be saved from my sinful self, but he's given me so much opportunity to be happy outside of the main thing he has called me to do.    Not only does God present us with unique opportunities, but he also gives us the free will to decide whether or not to seize these times when we are potentially connected to a future we would enjoy, or some sort of change. He's got our backs, He gives us all the things we will ever need in life, and yet we sometimes (well okay, a lot of times) reject His provisions.   I've recently had a lot of Opportunity presented to me by my Father in Hea
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