What is Rhetoric?

To be completely honest, I don’t know much about rhetoric. The brief understanding that I have of rhetoric comes from the very first college English class that I had on Wednesday, and an AP English course that I took in my Junior year of high school. From what I understand, Rhetoric is the influence that a piece of writing has on the world. now, what does this mean? To put it simply, rhetoric is the level of persuasiveness that a piece of literature has. In high school, I learned about three different types of rhetorical persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the credibility of a piece of literature. An author can effectively use ethos by establishing their credibility by either stating why they are an expert in the field that they are writing in, or using superior diction, or language to make their literature seem more credible. An example of bad ethos is how I started this blog. I stated that I did not know much about rhetoric. Why would anybody read a blog about rhetoric if the author started by saying they did not know much about rhetoric? Pathos is the emotional connection that an author can form with the audience. This can be done by using imagery, or by trying to relate to the audience. Logos is the logical persuasion of a piece of literature. An author can use logos effectively by using proven facts that effectively support the argument they are attempting the construct. If an author can use all three forms of rhetoric, ethos, pathos and logos, effectively they will increase the persuasion of their work, which will cause their work to have a larger influence on the audience, which will cause it to have a larger influence on the world.