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Howard Hinds
Professor Pierson
ENC 1101
11/15/2017
Paper 3: Individual Essay

This collaborative research essay will examine the use of ethos, logos, and pathos in a text,

guide to public forum debate, from the National Debate Honors Society community. The National

Debate Honors Society is a community which aims to give members skills necessary for almost

every career. For example, skills such as the art of presentation, argumentation, and

communication which are essential characteristics necessary for most careers. The main literary

sponsors include members of the national debate honors society who hold high positions that do

not debate during the debate but instead judge and/or organize the event. These are the people who

shape students into effective debaters by creating the rules of the public forum debate (PFD). The

community values professionalism, sound argumentation, solid presentation, clear

communication, solving problems by establishing positions, and understand the terminology

related to the topic at hand. These values are apparent because they are all necessary to be an

effective debater according the guide to public forum debate. One literate activity includes

constructing several speeches on both sides of the issue so that they can adapt its case to the

opposing teams claims. Another common literary activity includes reading and understanding the

guide to public forum debate.

The Guide to Public Forum Debate is the text used from the community and it offers

strategies for speeches and explains the rules and the standard protocol of the Public Forum Debate.
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The Public Forum Debate (PFD) is a team event that advocates or rejects a position posed by the

monthly resolution topic. The rules and protocol explained in the text involve how topics are

chosen, how to develop a case & support with evidence, how a debate is started, what the coin toss

determines, time limits for speeches and prep time, what a crossfire is, and how the debate will be

evaluated and judged. The strategies discussed include how the first pro and first con speech should

be constructed, how the second team should approach their speech based off the first team, how

the third & fourth constructive speeches should approach the debate, the complexities of summary

speeches, the importance of delivery & working knowledge, and the art of argumentation.

The exigence for this text can be unveiled by answering three questions. First, what is the

text about? This was primarily discussed in the previous paragraph, but it is mainly concerned with

how a Public Forum Debate functions. Second, why is this text needed? This text is needed to

answer questions that new members of the PFD might have. Third, what is the text trying to

accomplish? The text is trying to help potential future members of the PFD understand the rules

and protocol for the debate, so they can be effective members. The audience of this text is anyone

who reads the Guide to Public Forum Debate. The intended audience would be whoever needs

a guide to a Public Forum Debate and would most likely be new members of the PFD. The actual

audience could include the intended audience and anyone who stumbles across the text or the

rhetors who are reviewing the text. The Rhetors include the PFD team that crafted the text and the

new members who shaped the text based on what information they needed to become effective

PFD members. The text is constrained by the fact that the text must be professional and limited to

topics concerning Public Forum Debates while also following an effective format for a guide.

When looking for how the use of ethos, logos, pathos affects the text, we must first

understand what ethos, logos, and pathos means. Ethos, logos, and pathos are Aristotles
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rhetorical proofs and are three appeals used as different types of arguments to support or argue

a claim (Higgins Walker 2012). According to Higgins and Walker, the best types of arguments

will implement all three. A writer will appeal to ethos when they convince the reader of the authors

credibility, logos when a writer uses logic to argue or support a claim, and pathos when a writer

appeals to emotion. Seeing as ethos, logos, and pathos are all things to look for in writing, each

one is an analytic. In other words, when looking for ethos, logos, and pathos, look for appeals to

credibility (ethos), logic (logos), and emotion (pathos).

When looking for ethos, logos, and pathos in the guide to public forum debate, I found that

the text appeals to ethos and establishes credibility with the reader by explaining the rules for

debate adequately which would be impossible to do without knowledge of the rules. For example,

the document explains how the debate will be formatted, who goes first, and what advice debaters

should follow. The document also explains that the creators of the text are members of the PFD

who run the entire debate. This and other appeals to ethos shows that the author can be trusted with

what they say.

The text also appeals to logos seeing that the text was created by members of the PFD who

are experts on the public forum debate and those who are reading the guide to public forum debate

are not experts. So, it would be logical to agree with the PFDs approach to their own debate

format. An example of an appeal to logos in the text would be the advice to communicate clearly.

This is logically as a debater would want their speech to be clear and understandable for the

audience they try to persuade. This also has to do with the exigence of the text seeing as the experts

need to explain to new members how the public forum debates work so that they can become active

and effective members.

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Another interesting detail found in the text is the absence of pathos. For example, the only

possible appeal to pathos in the whole document could be the use of illustrations. For example,

there are two separate illustrations of a man and woman engaging in a debate in front of two

podiums. These could bring about a reminiscing emotion pull to the reader, but this is highly

unlikely. This lack of pathos could possibly be because the National Debate Honors Society does

not value emotional argumentation in their community, so they would not incorporate pathos into

their guide for new members. So overall, what was found was the text, guide to public forum

debate, relies heavily on ethos and logos but not pathos.

Seeing that the text relies heavily on ethos and logos and not pathos could be related to the

values in the National Honors Debate Society. A major component of the community is debate,

hence the need for a guide on the public forum debate, and a key component of debate is

argumentation and the use of ethos, logos, and/or pathos. However, arguments in this community

need to be judged to see which side wins. Pathos, or appeals to emotion, is hard to judge and is not

equally effective to every individual audience member. So in order to judge arguments in this

community they are judged based on evidence. Ethos and logos are the only arguments that use

evidence. For example, there needs to be evidence to establish credibility and the use of logic itself

is evidence. And since the community values ethos and logos rather than pathos, they would

construct a guide that shows those values by not appealing to emotion in their text. In other words,

since the community itself does not value the use of pathos in argument, they would not use it in

their text and that is why there is an absence of pathos in the text, guide to the public forum debate,

for the community that is the National Debate Honors Society.

Works Sited:
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Higgins, C., & Walker, R. (2012). Ethos, logos, pathos: strategies of persuasion in

social/environmental reports. Accounting forum, 36(3), 194-208.

doi:10.1016/j.accfor.2012.02.003