Impact of Aristotle's Ethos, Pathos, Logos on Digital Communication

This essay examines the enduring relevance of Aristotle's linear model of communication, focusing on the application of ethos, pathos, and logos in contemporary business communication, particularly within the digital domain. It explores how these rhetorical concepts influence persuasion, marketing, and advertising strategies. The essay highlights the importance of credibility (ethos), emotional appeal (pathos), and logical reasoning (logos) in crafting effective messages. It provides examples, such as PETA's use of ethos and the Commonwealth Bank's digital marketing strategies, to illustrate the practical application of these concepts. The author concludes that Aristotle's principles, developed centuries ago, remain highly effective in modern business communication, emphasizing the importance of adapting these strategies to the evolving digital landscape. The essay also considers the impact of technology on the power of persuasion and the need for digital literacy in applying these communication elements. It demonstrates how these elements are essential for business growth in a competitive market. The essay's thesis is that Aristotle's ethos, pathos, and logos have a positive impact on modern digital communication.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION AND ACADEMIC WRITING
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION AND ACADEMIC WRITING
Name of the Student:
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In the process of strategically planning negotiating speech, it is extremely desired to
avoid certain coincidences and further to choose the most effective and appropriate means to
accomplish its purpose. Utilisation of several strategic orientations is associated with each facet
of the language. Proper negotiation in contemporary business communication is considered as
a strategic process that incorporates an understanding of the circumstances, the deliberate
behaviour and a plan to reach the business targets and objectives (McCormack 2014). This is
essay will intend to cast light on the linear model of communication that has been developed by
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher. In addition to this, the people will further observe the way
ethos, logos and pathos have been applied to contemporary business communication and to
what extent these concepts can be applied to the digital domain of business communications.
The thesis statement of this essay is “Positive impact of Aristotle’s ethos, pathos and logos on
modern digital communication.”
In the process of evaluating the human nature in scientific manner, Aristotle had developed
a linear model of communication for effective verbal communication that is considered to be
the first model of communication proposed before 300 BC(Murthy and Ghosal 2014). However,
it must be noted that this concept of communication has been widely accepted among all the
communication models across the world. The Greek philosopher had believed rhetoric as a
study of communication as well as persuasion and various messages or information that should
be proposed for various audience and varied situational context in order to achieve the desired
outcomes or further to establish a propaganda (Busch and Shepherd 2014). Aristotle had
introduced three primary elements that must be present in a competent communicator or a
leader. It is further to be noted that these elements are associated to each other and reinforce
the other elements in the process of communication. One of the critical elements known as
‘ethos’ is considered to be the characteristic that enables one to endorse credibility in front of
the audience. However, it is significant to note that if there is no evidence of credibility or
reliability the audience will feel to believe in the speaker and further will not be persuaded. For
instance, the implementation of ethos in advertising is not restricted to improve the
profitability of the company. Several non-profit organisations utilise character-basedmarketing
in order to promote their missions. However, among the most renowned organisations that

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implement this technique is the People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals also known as
PETA(Eyman 2015). It is further to know that the PETA campaign that condemned the use of
animal has promoted several celebrities who displayed relative information related to the
practices involved in animal fur harvesting. It is further to note that while ethos indicates the
appealing nature through authoritative nature, pathos is something that every contemporary
business relies on in order to be the most powerful as well as effective tool by further making
an appeal to the audiences emotional base. These emotional appeals can therefore be directed
towards the feeling of wellbeing protection anxiety, anger, desire inferiority and pride. It is
further to state that pathos or emotions play an integral role in the domain of marketing and
advertising. For example, according to one of the contributors of the famous advertising
organisation four fundamental emotions can be productive in marketing namely
happiness,grief,anxiety and anger(McCroskey 2015). It is further to note that each of these that
those will elicit a different response within the mind of the target audience of the business.
Furthermore, the third concept of communication that is logos is considered as appealing to the
logical side of individuals that would incorporate the use of fact sheets, statistics or other types
of logical as well as scientific reasoning(Hannah and Jennings 2013). At this juncture, it is
significant to note that digital rhetoric or the use of ethos pathos and logos in digital
communication has a technological foundation which goes beyond the exclusiveness of
computers. The use of these return concepts in digital business domain overcomes the
persistent developments and transformations in technology. Amidst all the recent technological
transformations, the role of ethos pathos and logos have been emerging in the domain of
digital business communication or social media. It is further to note that the content on the
digital arena must be critically evaluated in order to ascertain its credibility (Holliman and
Rowley 2014). However, the digital literation or business leaders who employ the three
effective concepts of oral communication must take into consideration where readers and
customers live and work along with their level of qualification. In order to employ these
elements of communication in an effective manner, an enhanced level of self-awareness is
required (Eyman 2015). A business leader utilising the concepts of ethos, pathos and logos in
the business process must take into account the purposes, intentions and motivations for

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developing a digital piece of work. There are certain digital business executives who might want
to involve their leaders in the current business strategies for example Facebook posters or
messages might reflect to be expressive and entertaining to the users (Hannah and Jennings
2013). However, it must be noted that technology or digital Communication extends the power
of persuasion for behavioural changes. Furthermore it is significant to note, that the
employment of ethos, pathos and logos or digital rhetoric in this modern businesses matter
because even in a competitive and difficult business market, employment in media marketing
or digital business have been witnessing a steady growth both in the context of remuneration
as well as in rate of recruitment (Dima, Teodorescu and Gifu 2014). The utilisation of ethos,
pathos and logos in digital communication has shown immense effectiveness and has further
involved the marketing efforts of one of the leading finance organisations of Australia that is
the Commonwealth Bank. Success of CBA must be noted specifically to the way they have
combined their posts, messages with several social media sites such as Facebook in order to
add quality content for its consumers(McCroskey 2015). The organisation further encourages
enduring engagement by wearing content and information. The use of brief taglines and
engaging articles has proved to be immensely effective for the organisation to achieve its
success.
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that Aristotle’s concept for
effective oral communication that has been developed almost 2000 years ago is still
demonstrating its effectiveness on modern business communication processes. The essay has
effectively observed the conceptualizations of ethos, pathos and logos by further concentrating
on its implications on contemporary business communication specifically shedding light on the
domain of digital business domain.

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References
Busch, T. and Shepherd, T., 2014. Doing well by doing good? Normative tensions underlying
Twitter’s corporate social responsibility ethos. Convergence, 20(3), pp.293-315.
Dima, I.C., Teodorescu, M. and Gifu, D., 2014. New communication approaches vs. traditional
communication. International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, 20, pp.46-55.
Eyman, D., 2015. Digital rhetoric: Theory, method, practice. University of Michigan Press.
Hannah, S.T. and Jennings, P.L., 2013. Leader ethos and big-C character.
Holliman, G. and Rowley, J., 2014. Business to business digital content marketing: marketers’
perceptions of best practice. Journal of research in interactive marketing, 8(4), pp.269-293.
McCormack, K.C., 2014. Ethos, pathos, and logos: The benefits of Aristotelian rhetoric in the
courtroom. Wash. U. Jurisprudence Rev., 7, p.131.
McCroskey, J.C., 2015. Introduction to rhetorical communication. Routledge.
Murthy, D.M. and Ghosal, M., 2014. A study on Aristotle’s rhetoric. Research Journal of English
Language and Literature, A peer Reviewed Int. Journal, 2(4).