Rhetorical Strategies: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

It is important for both listeners and readers to easily recognize how speakers and writers apply the three rhetorical strategies; ethos, pathos, and logos in their attempts to communicate effectively. Ethos generally refers to the credibility of the writer and how effectively the writer convinces the reader that her/his writing is qualified. Pathos refers to the readers ‘emotion. For instance, triggering a sympathy feeling through impacting fear to the audience. Finally, logos demonstrate the writers’ use of fact and figures to support the claim made in the post.

For that matter, this assignment will evaluate how Grose Jessica applies the three pillars in her articles “Cleaning the final feminist frontier” that was published in 2013.

The daily duties of any married woman in her house are never completed and keep on recurring now and then. Many girls, especially of American origin grows up knowing that house duties are for women. However, this norm has in recent time faced a lot of criticism.

One of the critics is Jessica Grose who through her article expresses her dissatisfaction about the role of men in the house. She says that even though men have started cooking and providing care to children, cleaning is still the role of women, which she considers it unfair. She starts by demonstrating her credibility with the use of reliable sources and facts. She cites reliable facts and figures and effectively triggers the readers’ emotions. Although, at the end of her post, she tries to appeal to the audience’s emotions, which weakens post’s credibility and her argument.

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In her post, Jessica demonstrates a certain scenario whereby she with her husband is involved in cleaning the house after the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy. She then gives the reader a framework of how cleaning is unfairly shared in her marriage and compares the same with the significant number of women that face similar situations in a relationship. The writer also provides several reasons why husbands are not actively involved in cleaning activities in-house. First reasons are that all praises of a clean and decent house go to a lady. Second, both media and other forms of advertisement praises men for both child care and cooking delicious food but not cleaning. The last reason given is that cleaning is not fun. In an attempt to solve this dilemma, Jessica puts forward some effective solutions; drawing a chart of everyone’s responsibilities, sharing tasks by one’s ability and skills, transforming cleaning to be fun through the use of gadgets and lastly, accepting dirtier house.

In the whole post, Jessica applies a significant number of sources, which demonstrate her credibility, appeals to ethos, and strengthens her argument. Some of the sources used are Tsui-o Tai and Sociologists Judith Treas. She also effectively applies Matthew Krehbiel sources in her post. By citing all these sources and many others, it is clear that her credibility is strong. It also demonstrates that the writer has conducted thorough research, has given facts and professional view to support her argument. Furthermore, Jessica also makes use of own illustrations and examples from her relationship with her husband to support the argument. These examples demonstrate that Jessica possesses an ownership stake in and personalized experience with the issue in hand.

In addition to the use of ethos, the writer also applies logos in her post, with a significant number of statistics, factual statements and logical ideas evident in the post. For instance, she give a fact about her relation and unfair distribution of house responsibilities with her husband. She says “My husband and I both work. We split midnight baby feedings …but … he will admit that he’s never cleaned the bathroom, that I do the dishes nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows how the washer and dryer work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight months.” This quote clearly shows that Jessica is responsible for almost all household duties. To add on this fact, she provides reliable statistics: Approximately 55% of mothers who are full-time employed in America carries out some household chores on an average day. This number is compared to only 18% of hired fathers that help their wives with household duties. Another statistic shows that even in Sweden, a country that is known of having gender equality, ladies do 45 minutes extra household work more than their men. With the help of these statistics and many others in the post, it is clear that Jessica has offered logical support to her argument that it is a significant and real issue that husbands are reluctant in carrying out household chores, which is unfair. The facts and statistics appeal to logos and triggers an impression to the reader that this menace is worth serious discussion.

With the effective use of both ethos and logos, Jessica also applies pathos in her post, especially at the start and middle parts. In the introduction section, the writer applies emotionally- triggered words and sentences, which triggers a feeling of sympathy. Grose reports that while she was eight months pregnant, her husband was not helpful in matters related to household chores. She evokes an image that portrays both the vulnerabilities and challenges of carrying an unborn child and still conduct daily chores. She aims to make readers sympathize with her. Some words like “not fun,’ ‘a headache,’ and “be shunned” among many others trigger negative feelings about cleanings, that make the audience to show sympathy to women facing these issues. The other clear feeling that the writer support through the use of her words is “fairness.” Some phrases like “fair share,” “more housework,” and “second shift work” helps is showing extreme unfairness that women face in their houses. These words and phrases trigger the readers’ anger and frustration because of injustice that women face.

Despite her effective use of these three pillars of rhetorical analysis, the writer does not effectively use ethos at the end of the post. For instance, she highlights that when men are doing some household chores, they are regarded as “SIGH’- which usually “barf.’ The use of a word like “barf” is unethical and immature and also quaking to many readers. When the readers see this kind of words, they tend to stop taking the post seriously and hence tarnishes her credibility and hence her claim weakens.

Every reader can testify that this issue exists in the current marriages. But, her shift to create both sarcasm and humor makes the post taken lightly by the readers. Even though her conclusion lacks credibility and strong argument, her introduction is satisfactory to consider this problem important for further discussion.