Forms of appeal

In the preface to The Shepherd’s Life: A Tale of the Lake District, James Rebanks uses a combination of ethos and pathos as forms of appeal. Ethos is more dominant and is used to make Rebanks appear knowledgeable, while pathos appeals to readers’ emotions. 

Ethos 

Ethos is used to make James Rebanks appear knowledgeable, trustworthy, and skilled in the eyes of the readers.

First, Rebanks uses his personal experience to show readers that he is not ashamed of being born in the Lake District and that he is not ashamed of his family’s ancestry: “We were firmly set, like our fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers before us, on being what we were, and had always been” (ll. 6-7). By explaining that he knew from an early age that he was going t...