Turning Science into Art

In my community blog post about supporting small businesses, I began with pathos, an appeal to the emotions of my readers, by informing them of the detrimental effect of the current pandemic on small businesses. I included mini anecdotes with examples of people I’ve seen in my own community and online, who work hard to keep their small businesses running, which made the topic more personal and therefore easier for the reader to relate to and sympathize with.

With my references to the two articles on the benefits of supporting local and small businesses, I employed the persuasive strategy of logos. These articles provide logical reasons for why supporting small businesses is so important by explaining how it builds a community, boosts the local economy, and allows for healthy competition in the market, among other reasons. Since I sourced this information from Time and the University of Alabama, I also, arguably, used ethos with the credibility of these organizations, but these are not necessarily go-to resources for information on economics. The logical reasoning behind supporting local and small businesses and the emotional appeal at the beginning of my post constituted the most important persuasive tactics to my argument.

In terms of which of the three strategies mentioned—pathos, logos, ethos—works best to connect with a blog and its reader, I think all three serve their own unique purpose, and it depends on the topic. Given the personal nature of the blog medium, you can never really go wrong with pathos, since readers often enjoy blogs because they feel, or want to feel, connected to the writer. This appeal to emotion could strengthen that connection and make for a more persuasive argument. Depending on the topic, logos and ethos could bolster an argument as well, especially if it relies on clear-cut facts or statistics or perhaps could benefit from someone well-established in their field of expertise. In general, all three will serve you well—it is how you string them together that will make all the difference. After all, …

Persuasion is not a science but an art.

William Bernbach