Ethos: the Art of Ethical Persuasion

Are you a credible source? When you speak, do people listen? No, this is not an E. F. Hutton commercial, it is an article to try and help you deliver stronger presentations.

When delivering a persuasive speech, it is important to think about the ethical appeal, or ethos. Simply put, you will be able to convince more people if they believe you are a credible source, you have done your homework and you are putting forth the necessary information.

When Aristotle first came up with the idea of ethos, he argued that the speaker's credibility must be built and established in each speech; that what the speaker did or said before did not matter. Of course, in today's society, that is not the case. We look for the advice of certain people because we trust them. We look to take classes with certain instructors, attend speeches and do a myriad of other things based on the person's past performance.

It is important to realize that nowadays there are three different types of credibility. First is initial credibility, then derived and finally terminal credibility. Initial credibility is the credibility the speaker has before he or she says a word, the credibility at the start of the speech. Derived credibility is how it increases or decreases during the speech itself. It is important to note that this can wax and wane during the speech. Terminal credibility how credible the audience perceives the speaker to be at the end of the speech.

When explaining this to my class, I usually show a clip from the movie My Cousin Vinny. In the movie, Joe Pesci's character (an attorney) puts his finance on the stand, played my Marissa Tomei. She is an out of work hairdresser testifying as an automobile expert. When she first starts testifying, she doe not come across as a credible witness. Some things she says during her testimony actually reduces her credibility while other things increase it. In the end, her terminal credibility is very high.

If you are trying to convince someone of something, it is important that you think about this aspect of things. What is your initial credibility? What can you do to increase that credibility during your presentation to make sure you finish with strong terminal credibility. Only if your terminal credibility is high will you be able to change the mind of some people in your audience. Not many students or speakers actually think about this aspect. If you do, it will lead to you giving much stronger presentations.