Example Of Ethos Pathos Logos

Ethos is a rhetorical device authors use to establish their credibility to speak authoritatively on a topic. To strengthen their arguments, they also use logos, or logical arguments and scientific data, and pathos to create an emotional reaction in the audience. In the ERWC Juvenile Justice unit, four different authors, with four different levels of ethos, discuss whether or not juveniles who have been charged with murder should be tried as adults in the adult court system. Most argue that minors should be tried in the juvenile court system, while one demands that adolescents who massacre innocent victims spend the rest of their lives in prison. After closely reading each author’s opinion, it is clear that Paul Thompson has the most ethos

First, Jennifer starts her paragraph with a quote by “James Q. Wilson, Harvard Professor and Crime Expert”(1) with the quote stating that some people will be good and some people will be bad, which is a fair and logical assumption. In any case, this quote is very broad and does not say if there is a way to change a person from horrific to terrific and vice versa, the person who she quoted is also not an expert in juvenile crime either, only in general crime, which differ from each other. Jennifer later in the article claims, “The nation is NOT sentencing children to die in a prison.”(11) and “a life sentence still allows a great deal of good living to be done.”(12). Strangely enough, the author does not cite anyone for these proclamations, which infers that these statements are purely off of her bias. In fact, her words were used solely to trick the reader to side with her and fill their heads with untruths. A study by the Equal Justice Initiative shows that children put in adult prisons are in fact “five times more likely to be sexually assaulted” and “face increased risk of suicide.” That does not sound like a “a great deal of living”(12) being done.(250

Thompson is a brain researcher and has conducted his own research with his peers to look into why juveniles commit crimes. For example, they found that every teen is having a loss of gray matter in the brain “at a rate of 1 percent to 2 percent a year.”(7). This makes a reader worried about teens and better understand their situation of truly not knowing what they are doing, and the reader can trust this author because he is personally the one doing the research at “University of California, Los Angeles”(5). The author has also shown evidence that even jurors have similar thoughts about children being convicted as adults, “The jurors, by returning a verdict of second-degree murder instead of first, indicate that they believe Brazill’s actions, while not accidental, were not fully thought out, either.”(9) This makes the reader feel sympathy for the child and helps them realize that even the people who are supposed to hand justice are showing softness to children because they know kids like Brazill are too young and underdeveloped to comprehend the decisions they make. Paul uses his own research for a logical conclusion to why children should be charged as children no matter what the crime, and he shows, other people’s research and