Letter From Birmingham Jail:
We will look at this together in class and identify where Dr. King appeals to the classical sources of persuasion (A&B ch 10).
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Also, use this as a reference to identify the sources of persuasion:
http://courses.durhamtech.edu/perkins/aris.html
For your comment:
list a few passages where you think Dr. King effectively appeals to ethos and pathos and explain why. How is this example useful to you for composing essay #3?
Finally, write down ways you can appeal to logos in discourse.
Left to Right: Plato and Aristotle-Really old rhetoricians!
"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
ReplyDeleteThis sentence appeals to pathos. It appeals to our emotional side because everyone has been through a situation where they were told the couldn't do something, only to overcome that criticism and achieve their goals.
"An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal."
This quote about just and unjust laws appeals to logos. The logic around this statement is that laws shouldn't oppress a people and if they do they should be removed. Dr. King gives this statement to identify through logical terms, what the southern racists were doing to the black community. He's saying a unjust law is something that oppresses a community, therefor, segregation is unjust. He defined what the problem was and then gave an example. Some of the ways we can appeal to logos in our writing is by using facts, statistics and deductive reasoning. We have to back up our arguments with example or anecdotes.
"I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights."
This passage appeals to ethos. Dr. King is giving some of his credentials. This is important to establish what is the authors credibility. We have to be critical of everything we read, so having someone's background gives us incite into the perspective they are coming from.
"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here." injustice=pathos
ReplyDelete"Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification." ethos=mindful
"Then it occurred to us that Birmingham's mayoral election was coming up in March, and we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day."
logos= decided to postpone because in the election, Connor would probably lose anyway (ie timing)
"So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so."
pathos= let him- as if you control the situation
"I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality."
logos= comparison of quantity to quality
"I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference"
ethos= President
This article is full or ethos, pathos, and logos appeals. The type I find most prevalent would be that of pathos because Martin Luther King Jr. was very passionate about civil rights, and he communicated that others should be passionate as well. I believe his use of ethos comes primarily from his language. Throughout the writing he sounds intelligent and calm and coherent, even if he is in a jail cell, it also gives him an air of modesty. He sounds as though he knows what is right, and he backs it up with examples. His examples would lead to his appeal to logos. When he explains his actions and why he chose them, he is sharing the logic of his decisions and thus illustrating logos.
'My fellow clergymen...'
ReplyDelete-ETHOS(Author)-He is a clergyman as well (part of discourse community)
'President of the South Christian Leadership...'
-ETHOS (Author) -
'We have waited more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights...'
-LOGOS, PATHOS, ETHOS- A bit of each in this.
'An unjust law is no law at all...'
-LOGOS, ETHOS-
'But when you have seen vicious mobs...'
-PATHOS- (audience, author)
Appealing to Logos;
-Statistics
-Deductive Reasoning
-Laws and Legislation
Ethos:
ReplyDelete"I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights."
-This gives him credibility as a Christian activist and respectable leader. This is useful in learning how to establish my own credibility for paper 3.
"I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
- This passage plays on the values of the people he is trying to persuade, being the people by whom he has been incarcerated. I could use this idea to persuade my reader, but perhaps less passive-aggressively.
Pathos:
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal.' It was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany."
- This is definitely a low blow on MLK's behalf. Comparing the people he is writing to to Adolf Hitler would certainly strike an emotional chord with them. A comparison to a historic figure or event could be useful in paper 3.
"Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world."
-Martin Luther King basically threatens the church with abandonment due to his arrest. By saying that he has no support from organized religion and he may have to turn only to his internal faith, he is reaching to affect the emotions of those to whom this letter is addressed. A threat to turn away from the organization in which I am appealing to could be useful in persuasion for paper 3.
Logos:
"We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights."
- Statistics drive his point of inequality forward. Logic and statistics, in my eyes, are the most powerful piece of persuasion, and will be very useful to me in paper 3.
"I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers in the South have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some -such as Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, James McBride Dabbs, Ann Braden and Sarah Patton Boyle--have written about our struggle in eloquent and prophetic terms."
-Stating facts such as these, names of white people who helped Martin Luther King in his pursuits of equality, certainly would have an bandwagon type effect on those reading. Employing examples of people or organizations that support my cause could be helpful to me in the writing process.
Logos as a logical approach is also very powerful in my opinion. Not just statistics, but working around a problem or situation using logic, is a very powerful persuasion technique.
King makes an appeal to ethos at the beginning of the second paragraph when he informs the audience of his position as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and goes on to tell about the extent of this organization throughout the South. This is an appeal to ethos because it establishes King as a credible figure that has enough experience to be well-grounded in his arguments. In the ninth paragraph, King makes a reference to Socrates. This is also an appeal to ethos because it demonstrates that King is well-read and is familiar with a variety of ideas from different cultures outside of his own.
ReplyDeleteThe first passage I found to appeal to pathos is the third paragraph down in which King compares his plight to that of Paul the Apostle. I would consider this an appeal to pathos because it connects to the religious beliefs of Christian members of the audience. The 12th paragraph is perhaps the most powerful appeal to pathos because it brings up the effects of racism on children and families. King describes a 6-year-old girl with tears welling in her eyes when she is told that "Funtown is closed to colored children."
I think the strongest example of King's appeal to logos is in the fourth paragraph when he makes simple, straight forward claims that are based in reason. He states that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" and "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." These claims are easy to understand and take little more than light brainstorming to realize how they hold true in reality.
Along with fact-of-life ideas such as King's, quantitative data is also useful in appealing to logos. Facts such as statistics and prices are cut-and-dry, so they leave little room for opposition.
Dr. King first appears to use ethos when he says that, just like the apostle Paul carried the Gospel to parts of the globe, he too must carry the gospel of freedom. This establishes Dr. King's ties with prophets of the past and gives credibility to him as well as his cause, as he is comparing himself to an apostle. He also uses ethos when he says that what Hitler did was "legal" and what the freedom fighters did was "illegal" in order to discredit the legal system and give credibility to what he was doing, saying it was right whether it was legal or not. He uses logos as he argues why it has come to this, as he came peacefully and told the merchants to take down their racially offensive signs, and as they haven't, it is logical that it has come to this. He uses a basic cause and effect argument, as merchants wouldn't listen to them so they have to use a different tactic. He uses pathos when he says that through painful experience they that freedom is not a God-given right. He appeals to sympathy for the African-American man and the past injustices that were committed against him.
ReplyDeleteThe examples of ethos show that in order to show credibility, one good idea is to establish a connection between oneself and a person of credibility. To make a comparison between yourself and a person of credibility gives yourself a degree of credibility.
The use of pathos shows that if you are arguing a point, it is a good idea to make the person feel guilty, as Dr. King does with his reference to slavery. This seems to make the person feel obligated to continue reading and draws the person into your writing.
Logos could be attained through mainly a cause and effect approach. You can defend your stance by stating what made you reach this stance, the steps you took to reach this conclusion.
Pathos:
ReplyDelete"when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children,"
Ethos:
But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms
Logos:
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro
Dr. King uses Pathos when he talks about his own experiences with his children and being a black man in Birmingham. I think this appeal is successful because he is extremely descriptive. The descriptions allow you to imagine yourself in his place and give you the chance to question if you would react in the same way he has. I also feel that Pathos appears when Dr. King is talking about his journeys thorough the South, it' gives you an understanding of what he's gone through.
ReplyDeleteI think Ethos mainly appears in reference to the church and it's teachings. Ethos appears many times throughout the letter but especially when Dr.King compares himself to Apostle Paul and the prophets. All are of religious figures and had to go on a journey to share their messages.King uses them to prove that he has similar motives. However, I think religion had a greater influence on communities back in Dr.Kings time then than it does today, so it' may be a little hard for some to understand the weight of his comparison in today's world. I think King also uses Ethos when he is explaining civil disobedience. In his description he references the first Christians and thus associates himself with them. When King finally comes out and says he's "son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers" I think that's his final try to associate himself with the church and and it's teachings.
Logos appears when King tries to differentiate between "just" and "unjust" laws. In addition when Dr.King compares the African American's civil rights movement to biblical times and WWII it can be seen as Logos because he's citing parallel situations.
ReplyDeleteI believe that Dr. King used a form of ethos in the first couple sentences of his letter. He Starts to talk about why he is writing and talks about how he seldom looks at the criticism of his works because he is to busy but, stop and looked at one that was calling his activities "unwise and untimely". I think this is a form of ethos because he tried to persuade the audience since he took the time to answer the criticism that was writing something interesting and he was trying to make himself important so the audience would take the time to listen to what he had to say.
ReplyDelete