Logos And Pathos

Authors convey their stories through forms of writing to level with the reader and capture their attention. Some forms that authors utilize are ethos, logos, and pathos appeals, which are common among all writers. In Engineering Happiness by Manel Braucells and Rakesh Sarin and in Graham Martin’s “On Mindfulness and Mental Health”, the three appeals are utilized to help the reader understand the authors main goal of happiness. The similarities and differences of the works can be compared and contrasted when looking at how the appeals are portrayed. Martin, Braucells, and Sarin target the audience of college students through ethos, logos, and pathos appeals to make their works credible, logically explain their ideas, and engage the readers emotion.

Logos appeals are similar to ethos in the fact that they are based on others work, yet there are forms of logos that are based more heavily on the statistic part of the appeal. In Engineering Happiness, Bruacells and Sarin write, “The origin of this definition of happiness can be attributed to Jeremy Betham, who is regarded as one of the fathers of modern economics” (3). This is a statistic, which makes this a logos topic, and it states the credibility of where it came from. It makes the reader believe that what they are reading is reliable and factual. In “On Mindfulness and Mental Health”, it says, “In an early Meta-analysis…Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, and Walach (2004) found 64 empirical studies, but only 20 met their criteria of acceptable quality or relevance” (Martin 209). This shows Martin uses the same form of logos that Braucells and Sarin did above. Martin states facts from multiple scholars making his article reliable to the reader. Also, meta-analysis is when one takes large groups of data to find the mean or average. Saying this the data is without a doubt logically backed up. Martin conveys another form of logos when he writes about a quote from Kabat – Zinn. It says mindful thinking is when you are fully attentive of your surroundings (Martin 208). This makes this form of logos logical and statistical in a few ways. It is logical because if one where to meditate and focus on what they were doing it would make them be in deep though. It is statistical because he references Kabat – Zinn who was a specialist on mindful thinking. These are the two-deference’s found in logos appeals but differences can also be found in pathos