I have been listening to the excellent podcast series on critical thinking by Jonathan Haber. I have no idea who he is but I can recommend the podcast. I have a drive to work of about 30 minutes, and each episode fits that gap quite nicely, leaving me with a warm feeling of having learned something of value. One of the things that came up was Aristotle's three modes of argumentation. I have been using this concept quite a bit since I picked up on it and it is having some surprising benefits.
The idea is that any argument comprises three different styles of putting a case. These are pathos, ethos and logos. Pathos is basically the story, the reason why the argument matters or the emotional significance. Ethos is the authority or the persona. It is basically the reason why you should be listening to the person speaking. The third is logos, which is the argument from logic or reason.
This is quite a neat way of looking at it, and I have found it quite illuminating to apply it to stuff I have been writing. For instance, I had to come up with briefing notes for sales people to sell a range of products. I looked at each of the products in turn and literally came up with a pathos, an ethos and a logos based point in their favour. It worked surprisingly well. I revealed what I had done when I had finished, and one of the salesemen grasped it straight away and offered a better pathos based example for one of them. All in all, it went a lot better than that kind of thing usually does. Discussions between technical and marketing people often end up with people talking at cross purposes.
It's a simple enough trick. You just look at what you have written and make sure there is stuff in there that ticks all the boxes. I find it works just as well for e-mails, blog posts and even conversations if you can think quickly enough.
The benefits are pretty obvious. Your writing comes across more balanced, more interesting and more persuasive. My thanks go to Jon, and also to Aristotle.
No comments:
Post a Comment