By: Amy Hall, Taylor Vazquez, and Jennifer Dobie
Last week on September 29th, Oklahoma State University welcomed back a very infamous guest. Pastor Matt, but known to the majority of the student body as Pastor Bob, got quite the audience when he preached his fire and brimstone to the students who listened. When analyzing his argument and its appeal to an audience, all three parts of the rhetorical triangle were not present. The pastor's word no doubt had a pathos appeal. The main emotions from his audience was anger and maybe a mix of shock. The students were outraged with his so called word of God. His argument even left a girl in tears! But what about ethos? Or logos? Matt never tried once to build trust or credibility to his audience. Not one student gained his trust or wanted to go pursue a stronger spiritual relationship after they heard him speak. Which is any preachers goal when informing people about his religion. No one had respect for the man as he damned everyone to hell either. He definitely had an art of persuading people away from his views. There were some truth in what he was saying, no one can deny that, which meant he has a logos appeal. Regardless of the evidence he did provide, that still did not help his case. Yes he presented bible verses that supported his accusations towards the students, but with out ethos his logos had could not stand up in his argument.
An argument will not be effective if the three rhetorical parts are not used properly. You will not be able to captivate or convince an audience about your claim. Each of the elements has a potential to affect other elements, like what happened with Pastor Matt's ethos and logos in his argument.
Actually, Preacher Bob and Preacher Matt are two different people.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you looked at his argument from the perspective of the rhetorical triangle. You're certainly correct, I think, that he misused these appeals. His use of pathos (iciting anger) worked to undo his logos appeal, which I think was present but weak. Because of his tactic of angering the audience (which was no doubt purposeful), the logos of his argument became couter-rhetorical. Even those of us of faith wanted to disagree with him, no matter what he said, because we don't want to br associated with someone who argues violently and unethically.