The three ancient Greece means of persuasion as discussed by Aristotle are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos, the persuasive element of a person’s character that establishes their oratory credibility. This means that there past experience in their work is what qualifies them to instruct an audience on a topic. For example, a doctor has years of educational training and medical expertise and that’s what qualifies them to diagnose illness and prescribe treatments. This satisfies the Ethos element because the individual qualified themselves to instruct his/her patients in a medical fashion. Pathos, an appeal to emotion and a way to convince an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. An example of this would be if my friend was about to be the last person to register for classes, and I told him if he was the last person he would look irresponsible to everyone to get him to register. This example works because by telling my friend he will look irresponsible it will likely trigger an emotional response from him and get him to sign up. Logos, an appeal to logic, convincing an audience of an argument by way of reason. An example would be, “History has shown that the more power a politician has the more likely they are to be corrupt”. This works because its a statement based off a real-life trend not based off speculation. Context is extremely relevant when it comes to choosing a persuasive appeal, as a person I feel as if the choosing is more based off the perspective of the audience you are trying to persuade. If I wanted to persuade someone to trust me, I would choose the Ethos model. If I wanted someone react emotionally to my persuasion I would choose the Pathos model. Finally if I wanted to persuade someone of something that they believe is untrue I would use the Logos model to persuade them through reason and not just my own opinion.

Toulmin argues that arguing be done in a very formal sense when it comes to practice. He thinks that the person arguing on behalf of an idea should explain what it is they are arguing about in full. Meaning no part of the argument should be unexplained. For example, if I said “there are many hurricanes in Florida during the fall months”, the Toulmin model would call that I explain why Hurricanes come about at this time. Further, I would have to explain why they might not pose as much of a danger as previously believed. I think that this relates to “content and form” for a very specific reason. I think this because of how Aristotle explained the difference between the two. I think that since Toulmins model draws a difference between the content of speech and the form of it. Content is the meaning of the words spoken and form is the tense in which these words are expressed. The method made this easier to understand because the method extracts the meaning from the fact or assumption being analyzed and breaks down the different ways that can be expressed or interpreted. My favorite method is this one because I like how it breaks down the simplicity of going from an assumption to the reasons what is assumed is assumed.

I found that the poem showed in class last session had a very powerful message. The narrator had a goal and that was to prove why she was irate about being judged by others for speaking broken forms of english. These forms of english are thought to be “hood” by some and are looked down upon as a slang version of the language. She was defending her side by saying that she is not less smart for speaking broken english by demonstrating her amazing poetry skills. She explains the reason she and so many speak this way is because the english language was forced upon them when her ancestors were forced into the slave trade centuries prior. I agree with her and find her message to be inspirational that no one should allow another persons judgment influence how they live their life.

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