A Thought on Ethos

When I first considered this question, I was sure what side I would come down on. It was a forgone conclusion that I would make the argument that a speaker’s reputation is far and away more important in every situation, absolutely dwarfing the weight that a particular rhetorical moment plays. The more and more I thought about it, the more and more I concluded that the question proposed isn’t exactly fair. In fact, no person can make the claim that one is more important than the other on a broad level, because every situation that a speaker/author has to express themselves must be analyzed on an individual level. For example: The United States has just come under a major terrorist attack carried out by an unknown rebel group. The country is in a panic. Someone must bring this situation under control and restore calm in the minds of her country. So who else pops on the television other than well known Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. After several minutes of listening to his well thought out, emotionally compelling piece, Americans have a chance to process what has just happened. Will they respect and support his unusually supportive ideas on how the situation should be handled? Well, the obvious answer is absolutely not. Not only is Bin Laden well known for his terrorist attacks on sovereign nations in other countries, but also for helping coordinate the devastating terrorist acts in New York on Sept. 11 2001. Therefore, following the suggestions of this murderer on how to handle a post terrorist attack operation would most obviously be foolish, because even the most naive of us could conclude that because of his reputation as a hateful, anti-American terrorist, he most definitely doesn’t have the United States’ best interests in mind. On the opposite side, one can not only rely on reputation as indicator of one’s ethos in a given situation. If a well known, well liked politician were to advocate to re-instate slavery, it wouldn’t matter how respected and well thought of this individual was, nearly every person that knew of this would write off anything he had said and his ethos would therefore be affected in a highly negative way. The point we see from looking at both of these cases is that the possibilities for a particular situation where ethos can be judged are endless. There are speakers/authors who have terrible reputations with the public but give rousing speeches, those who have an impeccable public identity and deliver bombs, and others who lie in between. When it comes down to it, arguing in a dogmatic way may seem appealing, but in reality, ethos must be judged differently in every individual case, taking into account each person’s own reputation along with the content of his or her rhetorical piece.