Aristotle’s 3 Rules For Public Speaking




Public Speaking is an umbrella term for all sorts of oration activities delivered to a live audience. It involves transmission of thoughts, ideas, knowledge with the aim of inspiring, influencing, motivating and informing the world. 

Words are powerful weapons which embed the strength to create revolutionary changes. Hence, a Public Speaker can even become an embodiment of a leader because of his/her charismatic personality which attracts people with faith and belief. In a world that functions on connections and network, Public Speaking today has inevitably become an integral part for our lives.

According to ancient testimonies, approximately 2300 years ago, the famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote 3 rules for public speaking. He defined rhetoric as the “ faculty of observing in any given case the means of persuasion” He laid down three ways of this “means of persuasion”which are Logos, Ethos & Pathos.



1. ETHOS (Human Character)

Sharing the root word with Ethics, ethos means a speaker must radiate moral characters to create an aura of trust and authority in the audience.

Ethos is not about having confidence or experience but about having a good personality and a positive attitude. A speaker must be credible otherwise no one take heed of his/her words.
Imagine a speaker who does not even care to greet the audience and begins speaking with a rude facial expression as if he is extremely annoyed on having to speak. This speaker will fail to capture any audience because of his uncourteous behaviour. 



2. Pathos (Emotional Appeal)

Pathos caters to audience’s emotions. It involves infusion of enthusiasm and passion into the audience to “induce them to make the judgement desired”. You need to feel what you are saying in order to enable your audience to feel the same energy, emotion and passion.
As a speaker, your motive is to create and share an emotional bond with your audience. It is crucial that you match the value of your words with the expectation of your audience. If your emotions are true, your audience will experience the same pain, hope or anger in your stories. They will become your friends not just listeners.



3. Logos (Logical Reason)

Logos is often equated with  ‘logical reasoning’ embedding  true facts, evidences and figures. 

Your words must make sense. For example, while giving speech on motivation you cannot say sentences like “ Believe in yourself. Believe that you have the capacity to make sun rise the west and set in the east” You cannot deflout or mould universal law of nature just to serve your means.



Which is more important?

Imagine there are three speakers from different backgrounds talking about Poverty in India.
First, a man comes in and gives a flawless speech about the plight of the people living below poverty line. It evokes the emotions of compassion and sympathy in the audience. His speech is a reflection of pathos. 

Second, a politician with his charisma speaks with lots of palpable energy and passion. It infuses enthusiasm to help people living below poverty line in the audience. His speech reflects ethos.

Third, a highly educated lady comes and talks only with facts giving proper statistics. The devastating statistics shook her audience to the very core. Her speech reflects logos.
Now out of all these, which speaker do you think, is likely to grab the audience’s attention?
Some will consider the first man’s speech to be the best others might like Politician’s or the educated Lady’s speech.

However, Aristotle would have given supremacy to Logos i.e., the lady’s speech over the rest. This is because being a scientist himself, he believed that logical reasoning was the most important of all the three means of persuasion  owing to the fact that somehow everyone believes in facts, figures and logic. He considered that if a speech had logos, it did not need ethos or pathos.

However, a speech should be an amalgamation of all three ways in order to be effective and engage with the audience.

- Muskan Aggarwal



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