<p> Ethos Discussion Material Carolyn Skinner Spring 2007 Concepts for Discussing Ethos:</p><p> Ethos as habit—etymologically, ethos is related to the concepts of habit, custom, and character (Nedra Reynolds, 1993). For the Greeks, character (both who one was and how he was perceived by others) developed through habitual behavior. For students, this aspect of ethos might involve picking up the habits—of thought and of discourse—of academic communities.</p><p> Ethos as dependent on socially determined values—contrary to traditional descriptions of ethos that imply that morality, good sense, and good will are qualities that serve all rhetors well in every situation, the values that constitute an appropriate ethos depend on several contextual factors. Notably, o Not everyone has access to the same characteristics in the same quantities. Historically, the intelligence of women and African Americans has been doubted because of their exclusion from education; immigrants and members of the working class have had their morality questioned. o The values that contribute to an effective ethos may conflict. For example, physicians must balance the scientific values of objectivity and consistency with the humanistic values represented by treating the patient as an individual person (not a condition or a system of organs). o The qualities that constitute a valued characteristic vary across contexts. For example, the qualities that demonstrate one’s credibility in academic writing are quite different from the qualities that demonstrate one’s “street cred.” o The more diverse and unknowable one’s audience is, the more difficult it is to pinpoint the values of that audience. Both print and electronically published texts potentially reach very broad audiences. Unlike traditional rhetorical situations in which an orator spoke before a specific, often homogeneous, audience that was present before him, writers today often cannot see (literally or figuratively) the entire readership of their works. Even if they could, it would be likely that that audience would not all agree on the most significant values a rhetor should represent.</p><p> Intrinsic ethos—the sense of the writer conveyed exclusively through the text.</p><p> Extrinsic ethos—what the reader knows about the writer outside the text. Discussions of extrinsic ethos open the door to discussions of professors’ expectations for student behavior and how students might display (or, at times, subvert) the characteristics of a “good student.”</p><p> Collective ethos—in contrast to traditional models of the rhetor as an isolated individual, one seeking to gain something from the audience, the concept of collective ethos positions the rhetor as a member or an aspiring member of a group, such as the academic discourse community or college-educated individuals. o Because the rhetor seeks to join (through learning the values of) the group she addresses, she has a responsibility to that group. For example, students often want their professors to have a good opinion of their class or of college students as a Ethos Discussion Material Carolyn Skinner Spring 2007 whole. They also sometimes feel an obligation to give back to the community that supported their educations or to make good use of their educations. o We often see collective ethos at work in groups seeking recognition from a dominant group. Nineteenth-century American women physicians, for example, seem to have drawn from and contributed to a common pool of characteristics that made the combination of “woman” and “physician” possible. The tenuous nature of their position in society, however, forced each woman physician who wrote or spoke publicly to represent all women physicians. In some cases, a successful rhetorical performance improved the public’s attitude toward women physicians; in others, a poor performance by one undermined all. There is significant risk in depending on a collective ethos. o Despite the risks inherent in representing a group, a successful collective ethos is often necessary to contradict claims that a few members of the subordinated group are exceptional. Attributing the positive characteristics of the most successful members of that group to all members forces the dominant group to deal with the subordinate group’s presence, rather than permitting the existence of a few exceptions while writing off the others.</p><p>Discussion Ideas:</p><p> Ask students to talk about how they’re persuasive in ordinary life: o How do you get people to pay attention to you? To believe you? What characteristics do you need to display? How do you show people that you possess those characteristics? o Nudge students to recognize that getting attention and being believable require different behaviors in different contexts. o Is it ever effective to play dumb? To show your dislike of your audience? To show you’re unreliable? (contemporary literature often demonstrates that readers are drawn to unreliable narrators)</p><p> Ask students to bring syllabi from other courses to class. o What do the syllabi suggest that professors assume about students? What do they suggest professors expect of students? What characteristics do the syllabi state or imply that good students will display? o Then you can turn to a discussion of the values appreciated by the academy.</p><p> Arrange students into small groups. o Ask them to select a celebrity they all know fairly well and describe his or her ethos. What does he or she do, say, or wear that conveys those characteristics? o Ask the groups to share. Discuss how celebrities’ methods of establishing ethos differ from those generally available to or desirable in academic writers. For example, many stars wear ribbons to promote their favorite causes, but they rarely engage in extended reasoned argument about those issues. For celebrities, promoting a cause often contributes to their ethos (she’s the kind of person who Ethos Discussion Material Carolyn Skinner Spring 2007 opposes the death penalty), while traditional discussions of ethos and the values held in the academy reverse that relationship so that one’s ethos contributes to the argument being made for a particular cause (Patricia Bizzell, 1978).</p><p> Trace all the “hands” (layers of mediation) involved in bringing a text to the public. If you can use an example from your own writing, you can easily show students what was and was not in your control. The discussion topics and activities below are intended to highlight the factors outside the writer’s control that contribute to how he or she is perceived. They also suggest the role of the reader in attributing characteristics to the writer. o Think about how composing software (word-processing or website design) allows and limits how one writes and what he or she can say. It might be good to bring up the templates on Myspace and Facebook because many students are familiar with them and because the personal information they allow shapes ethos in obvious ways. o Talk about how many people in addition to the writer help shape the text: editors, peer reviewers, publishers, etc. o Talk about after-publication factors affecting how a text is received and how the writer is perceived: book reviews, summaries and citations, advertisements, etc. o Ask students to think and talk about how they attribute ethos to writers. You may want to bring in books with various cover styles and ask students to describe the writer (age, personality, interests, gender). You could also show them the first page of different kinds of texts to demonstrate that page layout tells them what to expect from a text. You could even give two different reviews of an article to each half of the class before they read the article and discuss how the reviews shaped their perception of the article and the writer.</p><p> During or after a collaborative writing project, discuss how co-authors craft ethos. Students may be more aware of ethos in collaborative writing because the voice of the piece doesn’t seem as comfortable or familiar to them as it does in their solo writing.</p>