Rhetorical Appeals The three elements of rhetorical appeals were analyzed in Po Bronson’s article “Learning to Lie,” published February 10, 2008. In the article, Po Bronson uses rhetorical devices to persuade the reader that a reasonable one-third of teens lie to their parents. Bronson discusses about young kids learning to lie and what their causes may be. To better convey his points to the reader, Bronson uses the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is trying to convincing the audience and a persuader by trying to achieve credibility. Logos is the appeal of logic and reasoning, and lastly, pathos is using emotion to persuade the reader. Through these appeals, Bronson tries to address parents about their children lying, their causes and effects, and showing them what their children is capable of. Bronson achieves ethos through the use of statistical evidence to support his claim. This scientific evidence persuades skeptical readers to trust in the outcome of real situation proving that children have the capability to lie at a young …show more content…
This is one of the reason why kids start lying to one another. Another event that occurred during the experiment is finding that parents support lies when they are “white lies.” Given a price for lying allows the child to be encouraged to lie more in the future. This concept is analogous to praising a dog for doing a good trick. Therefore, this influence of parents to encourage their kids to tell white lies encourages them to tell more lies in the future. Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal's McGill University is an expert at child lying behavior says that they lie to protect themselves (Talwar, 4). The lying starts by giving an excuse to get out of trouble. Kids already know the what will happen if they were caught doing something wrong so it is logical that they cover it up with lies. This example gives readers a logos