Forms of appeal

Tony Blair’s speech on terror is fairly balanced—he uses all three forms of appeal in more or less the same proportion, with logos being used slightly more.

Forms of appeal like ethos, l…

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Logos

The speaker appeals to the audience’s reason when he includes logical arguments, facts, or statistical evidence in his speech.

For example, he uses figures and estimations to emphasise the threat of terrorism:

This ideology and the violence that is inherent in it did not start a few years ago in response to a particular policy. Over the past 12 years, Al-Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26…

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Ethos

Tony Blair appeals to trust and authority in an attempt to make those who oppose terrorism appear morally superior.

For example, he appeals to the authority of the official Islamic religion to describe terrorist ideology as a fanatic deviation: “I want also to work with other nations to promote the true face of Islam worldwide.” (ll. 113-115).

The speaker makes Western democratic values appear legitimately superior to the misleading and illegitimate cause of terrorists: “In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.” (ll. 123-125).

To build trust and authority around his own person, Blair presents hims…

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Pathos

The speaker appeals to emotions with the purpose of creating an emotional reaction within the audience that makes them more likely to agree with his points.

As such, Tony Blair conveys a series of negative emotions which are meant to make the audience reject terrorism and to want to fight against it: “They murdered over 50 innocent people (in London) last week” (ll. 144-145); “Girls put out of school. Women denied even rudimen…