Unit 1 Essential Question

How do speakers & writers use Rhetorical devices to communicate their ideas?

Rhetorical devices are necessary when a speaker or writer is trying to communicate their ideas. The rhetorical devices they use define how the audience interprets what the rhetor is trying to say. This proves the importance of using the correct rhetorical devices for your message. There are many devices and strategies in their disposal, but some of the more popular ones are ethos, pathos, and logos, also known as the appeals. These appeals work well for rhetors when they are trying to connect to their audience and provoke their interest. Another device would be the patterns of development. These patterns help to develop information in the best way possible to achieve its purpose.

The appeals help a speaker or writer connect to its audience and provoke their interest. Ethos is the credibility that the speaker or writer has with the audience. Appealing to ethos is done through a rhetor's diction and the logos that they appeal to. This logos that the speaker or writer is trying to appeal to is the logical reasoning behind whatever point they are trying to get across. The last appeal, pathos, is the strongest of all three. Pathos is the appeal to the audience that reaches their emotions. Emotions of the audience are invoked by personal stories that an writer or speaker can write about.

Patterns of development are the ways that rhetors organize their information to become the best it can to achieve the writer or speaker's purpose. The patterns are narration, description, process analysis, exemplification, comparison and contrast, classification and division, definition, and cause and effect. The patterns help rhetors, after they establish their point, to then develop it and connect it back to their purpose in a fitting way. The multitude of patterns allows for multiple ways of analyzing a point. All the rhetor has to do is pick the most fitting one.