To act as persuaders, it goes without saying that civil interlocutors have to maintain civility in their dialogic exchange because, civility establishes companionability, promotes public morality, and sustains ethos. Hence, civil discourse is more productive in view of the fact that it is more persuasive. Inspecting civility with an eye towards rhetorics spotlights its persuasive implications as one of the key success factors of persuasive arguments. As such, observing the available means of persuasion is a vital skill for civil interlocutors. While some scholars have opined that classical rhetorics, Aristotle’s Rhetorics, has highly faded, it is still the antique reliable perusal of PAs as it remains viable in modern courtroom interactions. In his masterpiece, The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle systematises three persuasive appeals which are ethos (moral character), logos (the speech itself), and pathos (putting H into a certain emotional frame of mind). Intriguingly, these PAs assist the judge to resolve cases in the court and the defendants who try to effectively argue their legal cases. Basically, in this study, PAs of ethos, logos, and pathos manifest civility principles s of credibility, reasoning, and compassion respectively.
Persuasive appeal of ethos refers to the intentional effort made by the speaker to influence others using his personality that can be manifested not only in what he says, but also in how he says it. Basically, the convincing ethos demands that the speech is delivered in an effort to make the speaker appears credible and this credibility emanates from the manner of his speech delivery, his virtue, and his goodwill.
Moreover, ethos can be the speaker’s character, his authority, his power of persuasion. Civility guarantees the ethical character of interlocutors if they resort to it as it is the treasure trove of most positive linguistic and social behaviours. Persuasive appeal of logos exists in the speech itself or in the central thesis of the argument. Logos is achieved via sense-making, meaning-making, truth-claiming, and logic-ordering arguments. Logos is an appeal to the logical structure of a particular argument in an effort to persuade someone with the help of statistics, facts, definitions, and interpretations.Logos can be interrogative, narrative, rational, legal, and empirical. Integrative logos can be represented by asking certain questions to elicit information. Narrative logos can refer to the storytelling reporting that is suitable to the case in question. Rational ethos can be exemplified by means of well-structured legal arguments. Legal logos can refer to legal-dependent arguments using legal information. Empirical logos can represent real evidence like video recorded evidence. To be successful, logos must include rationality-based argument because it represents the persuader’s appeal to good reasoning.
Pathos has to do with the speaker’s attempts to put the hearer into a particular emotional state or certain frame of mind so that the hearer will be receptive to and ultimately convinced by the speaker’s message so as to elicit the desired feelings. Illustratively, emotions such as anger may be soothed or pity may be aroused in the courtroom interactions and may affect the verdict. From a broader perspective, pathos refers to the emotions that are aroused by the speaker to stir the hearer to an action or a change of behaviour. Emotions vary from one person to another so that an understanding of a particular event and social setting is required to effectively exploit pathos.
