The Rhetorical Situation: Speaker

The third element of the rhetorical situation is the speaker; the speaker is both a constraint on effectiveness and a great source of persuasiveness. In addition to the logos of the speech itself and the pathos of appeals to audience emotion, speakers rely on ethos. The speaker’s ethos, or character (as perceived by the audience), is partly a result of the reputation the speaker has with the audience, but it is more fully formed by the judgment the audience makes of the speaker's character during the speech. Classically, ethos was understood as goodwill, good judgment, and general "excellence" as a public person. Speakers with these traits were more persuasive. More recently, social scientists have considered the idea of "source credibility," and rhetorical critics have added the psychology of "identification." Credibility is related to truthfulness and trustworthiness. Identification refers to the relationship between the speaker and the listeners: if the speaker appears to be very much like the audience, then the audience is inclined to trust the speaker's intentions and accept her arguments. If the audience sees a "sameness" between the speaker and themselves, the audience presumes that even a self-interested speaker is speaking on behalf of audience interests. Dr. Zarefsky considered identification in terms of relationship-building between speaker and audience in Chapter 1 and turns to it more fully in discussing persuasion in Chapter 14. The idea even appears in the structure of speech introductions and in stylistic matters of decorum within the occasion.

In Chapter 1, Dr. Zarefsky considers the speaker in terms of the speaker's success in achieving the goal or purpose of the speech; later, in Chapter 5, he also considers the speaker's ethos as a constraint in the rhetorical situation. Citizen-critics also examine the speaker's ethos. As a critic, you would determine how the speaker's ethos enhances or detracts from the message and how it is a resource for the speech or an obstacle to be overcome. As a speaker yourself, you would prepare for a speech by understanding how you are perceived by the audience and how that adds to your success as a speaker.