Wendy Davis Ethos Pathos Logos

In June of 2013, Senator Wendy Davis from the Democratic Party conducted a filibuster against an abortion bill that had been presented in the Senate. She continued to talk for twelve hours straight so that she could hold off the session until midnight, after which the session would not have been able to vote on the abortion bill. Her main purpose was to continue to talk for such a long time that the session would run out of time for voting and would not be able to vote. This is something known as a filibuster and Sen. Davis decided to do this because she did not want the anti-abortion bull to pass. However, even though she spoke for twelve hours, she was not able to hold off the session until midnight. It would be useful to conduct a rhetorical

Davis talks about how the bill has had so much trouble in getting passed. She says, “The bill was filed on February 13th. It was referred to health and human services on March 19th, excuse me, February 20th. There was a senate hearing on the bill March 19th. It was reported out of the committee on March 26th and it died on the senate intent calendar” (Paragraph 5). Here, we find that even though Sen. Davis is quoting the dates in terms of using logos, she is also using elements of pathos to appeal to the emotions of the audience. She wants to appeal to the audience’s sense of proportionality by having them think about how difficult it has been for the women to get their rights. By talking about how many times the bill has been chaired and afterwards tabled, she is trying to depict that it is extremely difficult for women to get their rights. By doing so and by providing such logos, she is actually using pathos, which is to appeal to the sense of emotions of the audience. However, it is also important to note that even though Sen. Davis uses this combination of pathos and logos to appeal to the audience, it works to hurt her ethos. This is because for most part of the 11-hour long speech, Sen. Davis ends up using nonsensical information, often straying from the topic and just talking for the sake of talking to buy time. This worked to hurt her credibility as a speaker, as she was not able to stay on topic

Davis uses many instances of pathos and logos in her speech, backed by her credibility (ethos), the overall impact of her speech falls short because of the sheer length of the speech. She spoke for eleven hours straight, which means that there was a lot of time that she spent by straying off topic and talking about unnecessary and undesirable things. Moreover, it can be said that Sen. Davis could have benefited greatly by using various other rhetorical devices in her speech to support her arguments and to make it flow better. Her speech included more logos than anything else. When it came to kairos in the speech the proportionality was slightly off and it seemed as if she were rambling. In order for her speech to be more effective she could work on balancing out her viewpoints and making it a bit more organized. Moreover, she would have benefited more from a shorter speech rather than trying to filibuster the