Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 3: Ethos

I want to tell you about a movie called North. You may not have heard of this movie, but it is famous for two reasons: it's the first film appearance of Scarlett Johansson, and Roger Ebert condemned it as “one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. ...I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.” On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 15% rotten rating, and an audience score of 27% of users liking it.

Now let me tell you of another movie, one you're much more likely to have heard of: The Princess Bride. Released in 1987, it has enjoyed a long, popular existence, becoming something between a classic and a cult classic. People seem to either enjoy it or love it. It's funny, warm, and at the same time, a romantic fantasy with an enjoyable cast. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a critic's rating of 97% Fresh, and an audience score of 95% of users liking it. What's not to love?

So, here we have two films: one doomed to obscurity and mediocrity, the other, one almost universally enjoyed, if not adored. And guess what? They both had the same director.

That's right, Rob Reiner directed these two movies.

I bring up this example to address a common misconception with rhetorical appeal Ethos, or Authority. Often times people think Ethos refers to the authority of the author, but it's not as simple: Ethos refers to how a text presents itself, and its author in an authoritative manner. In other words, it's how the author, in their writing shows they are an authority.

Reiner's North and The Princess Bride show us that good people do bad work. Ebert said North was “not [made] by a bad filmmaker, and must represent some sort of lapse from which Reiner will recover”. Be that as it may, Reiner’s other successes don’t excuse a bad film just as a bad film does not ruin his reputation or ability.

However, we still look for and care about authority. Ethos doesn’t mean we refuse to acknowledge author, or ourselves as authors, but rather look at how the authors appear through their work. Ethos is not the author: it is the author presenting themselves. Verifying or applying any rhetorical appeal means taking a close look at how a piece is written or constructed. This means Ethos is demonstrated primarily by how an author executes their craft, from their own use of and familiarity with available research on the topic, how expertly they develop their argument, to their use of proper grammar and style, to name a few.

Basically, anything in a text that makes you say “whoever made this really knows what they're doing” is Ethos. If someone really does know what they’re doing, then odds are, they’ll do a good job of it. Everyone makes mistakes, but you don’t want your work or your research to end up being the sub-par accidents of experts just as much as you don’t want to flaunt your own inexperience.

Using and implementing Ethos in our own writing is therefore a tricky, even precarious, matter, but ultimately asks: is this the best I can produce? Does this represent me and my abilities in the best way possible? A text, whether film, article, or book, should be able to stand on its own and if it stands on its own, we will be able to see the good decisions the author (or filmmaker) made in putting everything together. However, something lazily or haphazardly produced, filled with mistakes and errors in any way, no matter the author's reputation or past work, will have poor Ethos.