Pathos And Ethos In Blink

Blink written by Malcom is an argumentative based research book about how our adaptive subconscious plays a huge part in every day life. It also tells of the pros and cons of our adaptive subconscious. In Gladwell’s Blink he used different forms of rhetoric to persuade us, the readers, of his point successfully. Gladwell uses multiple counts ethos and logos in his writing to get his point across along with pathos, analogies, rhetorical questions, and irony. He also uses his tone and diction to assist his writing. Gladwell’s purpose for writing Blink is to explain the secret potential of our subconscious mind and talk about its importance in relationships, decision making, and society. Gladwell’s audience for Blink is young adults and adults of modern society. This is the audience because of the overall topic of the book and the intelligence level of the book. The tone he uses in blink is factual however, he doesn’t have a monotone or boring way of explaining it, he’s compelling and energetic along with informative. Gladwell uses Ethos as well in Blink quite frequently. The way he uses ethos to confirm the credibility of the hypothesis and research he expresses. Through ethos we are persuaded to believe the research is true and that we can put trust in the

However, it is effective in Gladwell’s short stories. Pathos evokes strong feelings that we can relate to as the reader, thus making the short stories more effective and the physiological hypothesis discussed easier to understand. In the excerpt is an example, “Boss ran up the street toward Westchester Avenue because he had lost track in the shouting and the shooting of where they were. Later, when the ambulances arrived, he was so distraught, he could not speak… next to Diallo’s bullet-ridden body, and started to cry.” (Gladwell 194) This is an example of pathos because he used the fact that Boss was crying because of his dead friend to evoke emotion from