Ethos
Ethos (/ˈiːθɒs/ or US: /ˈiːθoʊs/) is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution and passion.The word's use in rhetoric is closely based on the Greek terminology used by Aristotle in his concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion alongside pathos and logos.In modern usage, ethos denotes the disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, organization, culture, or movement.[5] Similarly the historian Orlando Figes wrote in 1996 that in Soviet Russia of the 1920s "the ethos of the Communist party dominated every aspect of public life".[7] In rhetoric, ethos (credibility of the speaker) is one of the three artistic proofs (pistis, πίστις) or modes of persuasion (other principles being logos and pathos) discussed by Aristotle in 'Rhetoric' as a component of argument.[11] For Aristotle, a speaker's ethos was a rhetorical strategy employed by an orator whose purpose was to "inspire trust in his audience" (Rhetorica 1380).Discussing women and rhetoric, scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell notes that entering the public sphere was considered an act of moral transgression for females of the nineteenth century: "Women who formed moral reform and abolitionist societies, and who made speeches, held conventions, and published newspapers, entered the public sphere and thereby lost their claims to purity and piety" (13).[12] Crafting an ethos within such restrictive moral codes, therefore, meant adhering to membership of what Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner have theorized as counter publics.Similarly, Nedra Reynolds and Susan Jarratt echo this view of ethos as a fluid and dynamic set of identifications, arguing that "these split selves are guises, but they are not distortions or lies in the philosopher's sense.[18] Rhetorical scholar Michael Halloran has argued that the classical understanding of ethos "emphasizes the conventional rather than the idiosyncratic, the public rather than the private" (60).This stands in direct opposition to what she describes as the claim "that ethos can be faked or 'manipulated'" because individuals would be formed by the values of their culture and not the other way around (336).In the era of mass-mediated communication, Oddo contends, one's ethos is often created by journalists and dispersed over multiple news texts.Pittman writes, "Unfortunately, in the history of race relations in America, black Americans' ethos ranks low among other racial and ethnic groups in the United States.[36]: 389 Roger Cherry explores the distinctions between ethos and pathos to mark the distance between a writer's autobiographical self and the author's discursive self as projected through the narrator.[37] Ethos, or character, also appears in the visual art of famous or mythological ancient Greek events in murals, on pottery, and sculpture referred to generally as pictorial narrative.
Ethos (disambiguation)EthnosAustralian Capital Territory Legislative AssemblybeliefsideologymoralsOrpheusrhetoricterminologyAristotleconceptartisticmodes of persuasionpathosmoralityT. S. EliotOrlando FigesCommunistPalestineAsianismAtticismAttic oratorsCalliopeSophistsAncient IndiaSecond SophisticByzantine rhetoricTriviumStudia humanitatisModern periodCaptatio benevolentiaeChironomiaDecorumDelectareDocereDeviceEloquenceEloquentia perfectaEunoiaEnthymemeFacilitasFallacyInformalFigure of speechSchemeFive canonsInventioDispositioElocutioMemoriaPronuntiatioHypsosImitatioKairosMethod of lociOperationsPersuasionSituationSotto voceApologeticsDebateDeclamationControversiaDeliberativeDemagogyDialecticSocratic methodDissoi logoiElocutionEpideicticEncomiumPanegyricEulogyFarewell speechForensicFuneral orationHomileticsSermonInvitationalLecturePublicLightning talkMaiden speechOratoryPolemicDiatribeEristicPhilippicProgymnasmataSuasoriaPropagandaResignation speechStump speechWar-mongeringCriticismClusterDramaticPentadicIdeologicalMetaphoricMimesisNarrativeNeo-AristotelianAspasiaAugustineBakhtinBrueggemannCicerode ManDemosthenesDerridaErasmusGorgiasHobbesIsocratesLucianLysiasMcLuhanPerelmanProtagorasQuintilianRichardsTacitusToulminWeaverRhetoric to Alexander