Aristotle’s classic rhetorical distinctions, though not inspired, can help us understand the basic components of every message we preach so that we do not needlessly cause others to stumble over what or how we speak. In classical rhetoric, three elements compose every persuasive message: logos: the verbal content of the message, including its craft, organization, and logic pathos: the emotive features of a message, including the passion, fervor, and feeling that a speaker conveys and the listeners experience ethos: the perceived character of the speaker that listeners evaluate by assessing the
...more
