Description
Ethos is the “character” a work presents, and that character signals the work’s trustworthyness to the audience. Different audiences may have wildly different reactions to various types of ethos, and a careful writer adjusts their message to account for that and strengthen a work’s message. The essays we’ve been reading establish ethos through a variety of means: establishing common ground with readers, specific word choices, subtle shifts in tone, an attitude toward people and events, etc.; as we discussed in class, it can even be evoked through confident prose and proper grammar. The point being that the authors we have read carefully establish a character in order to convince us that they are worth listening to, and in doing so they create more memorable and impactful prose.
In 400 words or more, I want you to evaluate how any of the essays* we have read to this point uses ethos. [To clarify, I want you to analyze any one of the essays we have read in Food Matters, Emerging Writers or Geeta Kothari’s essay.] This means you must analyze that source’s use of ethos much like we did in class. That is, break down how and why the author makes specific rhetorical choices that create an ethos. Discuss wording and tone, anecdotes and other choices, and give the reader an idea of why those choices have been made. That is, explain the purpose of those choices, what impact they are meant to have.
Further, your paper must assess the quality of those choices. It must pass judgment on them. Argue whether or not you think the text’s ethos is effective or ineffective, helpful to the argument or unhelpful, etc. Think of this as the thesis of the paper. For example, “While X attempts to use a punk rock ethos as a point of identification for the audience, the fact that this piece was published in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the audiend–older, more conservative readers–will not likely accept that point of view.”
Keep in mind that just because you may disagree with a source’s stance, doesn’t mean that you must think it’s rhetoric is bad, or vice versa. We can think that people we agree with, people on “our side,” make bad arguments, and we can think that our opponents use excellent rhetoric.
Be sure to maintain focus as much as possible. Avoid creating a laundry list of all ethos-related aspects of the article you choose. Instead, focus on just a few closely related parts of the text, and analyze them in detail.
*You may NOT analyze the same essay you discussed in Response Paper 2.
FOOD Journal:
As stated in the syllabus, you should be keeping a “food journal” throughout the semester in order to aid in brainstorming for later assignments, as well as to continue to expand on the ideas you have in class or in response to the readings.
Look over your food journal to this point, pick the most interesting thing you have thought about or observed, and transcribe the journal entry in the text field below.