In class this past week we talked 3 different types of arguments in the book, “Everything’s an Argument.” Those arguments were, pathos, ethos, and logos. All of these arguments have 1 thing in common and that is they each try to persuade or convince someone, but they do it 3 very different ways. Some try and use emotion and sympathy to get the attention of the public which is pathos, others use their authority and credibility which is ethos, then there is logos and in logos which uses factual evidence to support their claim. Politician, news reporters, and talk show hosts are examples of those who use these 3 arguments to get their points across.
When you hear about an argument most of the time you think of a loud uproar between 2 or more people, but in our first day of class we watched a video that showed how comedians use humor to get their argument across. The comedian used a little bit of ethos and pathos to support his claim about hot pockets and although it wasn’t a serious argument he was still able to get his point across. Dr. Phil would have taken a more serious approach and I think that has a lot to do with the audience. I think that Dr. Phil would have used a lot more logos to support his claim. The comedian talked about how hot pockets are for white trash and people who watch NASCAR. I think here he used a little bit of ethos because he knows that people in the world do that and he to make it realistic so people would actually believe and understand the comments he was making about hot pockets. Dr. Phil would have maybe talked about obesity and how unhealthy hot pockets can be. I used Dr. Phil as an example because he is a respected talk show host and if he were talking about how unhealthy hot pockets were his argument would have been different than the comedians but both would figure out a way to convince the audience that what they were saying was true.
