The previous article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined logos and described why logical arguments are so important for your presentations.

Okay, that’s all very good in theory, but do we need to be logical masters to build high logos?

No, not at all.

In this article, we examine simple techniques you can use in your presentations to be more persuasive by improving your logos.

General Strategies for Improving Your Logos

In the last article, we identified, three general principles that you can adopt to improve your logos:

1. Make it Understandable
   Can your audience understand you? Or have they only absorbed half of your points?
2. Make it Logical
   Do your arguments make sense? Or do you require your audience to make an extreme leap of faith? How easy is it for your audience to connect the dots?
3. Make it Real
   Concrete and specific tends to win over abstract and general.

We’ll now look at 17 specific techniques derived from these three general strategies.

You may wish to compare to techniques in previous articles:

• 15 ways to improve ethos
• 18 ways to improve pathos

Make it Understandable

If your audience doesn’t understand you, they can’t be persuaded by you. To be an effective communicator, you’ve first got to be a clear communicator. To be a clear communicator, you must use words, phrases, examples, and visuals that are understandable, and you’ve got to deliver them at a pace that the audience can absorb.

How can you do this? Let us count some ways…

#1: Use plain language.

Use words that your audience uses. Avoid technical jargon that your audience (or a portion of your audience) isn’t familiar with.

Favor short words and phrases over long and convoluted counterparts. Don’t imitate the language you might find in a legal transcript or an academic paper. Technical language is necessary for those contexts, but it isn’t helpful in a conversation or presentation.

Note that “plain” language doesn’t mean “boring” language. Use vivid and descriptive language where appropriate.

#2: Be explicit.

Your audience should not need a decoder ring to figure out your message. It should be obvious. Spell it out if necessary. Make sure you are not misinterpreted.

It is particularly important to make the connection between premises and conclusions explicit. Because is a magic word for this purpose:  “Because premise A and premise B, we can see that conclusion must be true.”

If your arguments involve more than a couple premises, be sure your audience sees the relationship between them. “And these five advantages — capital costs, scheduling, inventory control, marketing, and employee satisfaction — together make this a winning proposal.”

#3: Trace sequences or processes in order.

To help your audience understand a sequence or process, march through the steps or phases in a meaningful order, usually sequential. If you jump around the steps out of order, your audience will be confused.

As the number of steps increases, so does the need to use a diagram for clarity.

#4: Use diagrams.

Carefully crafted and focused diagrams almost always enhance the understandability of your arguments. It doesn’t matter if you draw in PowerPoint, on a white board, or on the back of a napkin — it only matters that you clarify concepts for your audience.

But, be careful not to introduce an unnecessarily complex diagram. In the worst case, a busy diagram or one with lots of irrelevant details will frustrate your audience and diminish your understandability.

#5: Use charts.

Like diagrams, a carefully crafted chart or graph will speak volumes and clarify a previously fuzzy relationship.

Remember the warning about unnecessary complexity applies to charts too.

#6: Use progressive disclosure.

Suppose the diagram (or chart) which best explains the concepts is a complex one. What then?

In nearly all cases, it should be possible to use progressive disclosure. This means that you build up the entire diagram (or chart) progressively as a series of chunks, revealing only a part of the overall diagram at a time. If you are drawing the diagram as you speak, you are inherently using progressive disclosure. (You draw a few lines, explain what you’ve drawn, draw a few more, explain again, and repeat.) This is easy to do with PowerPoint too.

#7: Use comparisons, analogies, and metaphors.

Whenever you introduce new concepts, search for an appropriate analogy which helps the audience understand the new concept in terms of how they already understand the old one.

Make it Logical

Okay, your audience understands what you are saying, but does what you are saying make sense?

Does it pass the logical tests which your audience will be applying subconsciously?

#8: Leverage audience commonplaces.

Commonplaces often provide the most stable foundation for your argument. It’s a good ideas to start with these — because your audience already believes them — and build the remainder of your argument outward.

In a similar manner, framing the issue from your audience’s perspective is a great way to be more persuasive.

#9: Ask questions, and get your audience thinking.

Questions engage your audience and make them active participants in the conversation. Rather than passively waiting for you to provide answers, they’ll be contributing to the answers as you go. As a result, they will collectively feel ownership when you move toward conclusions. In the best case, they will feel that they came to the conclusions themselves — a sure way to guarantee your persuasiveness.

#10: Address the opposing point of view, and refute it.

On the surface, it seems foolish to bring up the opposing arguments. What if your audience didn’t think of that? Now you’ve just planted a seed of doubt!

On the contrary, bringing up opposing arguments makes you seem unbiased and boosts your ethos. (“You must be trustworthy; you are pointing out your opposition!“) Further, and more importantly, it allows you to directly refute the opposing arguments with logical arguments of your own.

#11: Emphasize the points of most value to audience

Unless you are using only perfect, irrefutable facts as premises, and making a purely deductive argument (where the conclusions follow immediately from premises), there are going to be holes in your inductive argument. (This doesn’t mean you’ve done a poor job. Inductive arguments have uncertainties by definition.)

Since your presentation has a finite length, you must make choices how to best spend your time. You will be most effective if you devote the majority of your presentation to discuss the issues of primary interest to your audience.

Make it Real

Concrete and specific details improve the strength of your arguments, and thus make your overall message more persuasive.

Explaining the theory behind why your new solution will raise profits is a good start; sharing a story about a company which raised profits 17% by adopting your solution is much stronger.

#12. Use props or photographs.

Talking about something in abstract terms is good, but using real objects or photographs carries more logos. Visual evidence is very hard to refute.

#13: Use vivid details.

In lieu of photographs, you can make your claims more real by supplying vivid details.

#14: Use facts and statistics.

Assigning numbers adds to the impact.

Compare the following statements:

• Every year, many people die of cancer.
• Every year, 3000 people in our community die of cancer.

Which one of these statements is more likely to persuade your audience to contribute money to cancer research?

#15: Cite your sources.

A statistic may be accurate, but without citing a source, your audience may dismiss it. By citing a source, you tip the scale towards believability.

(The credibility of your source is also important, but that is more closely related to ethos.)

#16: Use real examples and case studies.

You can construct convincing arguments about theories and ideas, but your audience will be left to wonder whether the theory holds in reality. Real examples and case studies show that the theory works in the real world.

#17: Use personal stories and anecdotes.

A personal story combines the power of a real example with that of a cited source. Assuming you are a credible source, personal stories and anecdotes carry more logos than stories or anecdotes “which happened to a friend of mine.”

What do you think?

The techniques listed here are far from complete. There are other ways to improve your logical arguments and your persuasive effectiveness.

What other techniques do you use?

When you are in the audience, what qualities of the presentation make you more likely to judge it to be a sound argument?

Please share your ideas in the comments.

Similar Articles You May Like... What is Logos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Speech Critique: Dan Pink (TED 2009) Presentation Power: Four Ways to Persuade Book Review: Thank You For Arguing (Jay Heinrichs)

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Have you ever listened to a speaker and thought:

• “I’m… so… lost.”
• “How did he come to that conclusion?”
• “Interesting theory, but it wouldn’t work for me.”
• “No way! That number has to be wrong.”
• “Nice slides, but I’ll stick with my own method.”

In all of these cases, the speaker probably suffered from poor logos. As a result, it’s doubtful that you adopted their central message or followed the call-to-action.

In this article of the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series, we examine logos and the importance of conveying your message in a way that is both understandable and convincing to your audience.

What is Logos?

Logos is the Greek root word from which the English logic is derived.

So, it isn’t surprising that, in speaking, logos is often equated with “logical reasoning” or “an argument based on reasoning”.

You might be thinking that logic is dry and boring. You might also be thinking that you want to be a dynamic and fun speaker, and so logical reasoning isn’t really that important to you.

While you may not get turned on by logical analysis, it is critical to your success. Before we can see why logos matters to you as a speaker, however, we need to define a few terms.

A (Very) Brief Tour of Logical Reasoning

Logical reasoning has two flavors:

1. Deductive reasoning, and
2. Inductive reasoning

Deductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning consists of one or more deductive arguments. You generally start with one or more premises, and then derive a conclusion from them. Premises can be facts, claims, evidence, or a previously proven conclusion. The key is that in a deductive argument, if your premises are true, then your conclusion must be true.

For example, consider the following deductive argument:

1. Audiences hate all boring things. (premise)
2. Bullet-point slides are boring. (premise)
3. Therefore, audiences hate bullet-point slides. (conclusion)

So, if audiences hate boring things (yes!) and if bullet-point slides are boring (yes!), then audiences must hate bullet-point slides.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is similar in that it consists of premises which lead to a conclusion. The difference is that the conclusion is not guaranteed to be true — we can only state it with some degree of confidence.

For example, consider the following inductive argument:

1. All Six Minutes articles you have read in the past were insightful. (premise)
2. This is a Six Minutes article. (premise)
3. Therefore, this article is insightful. (conclusion)

Given these premises, it is reasonable to expect that this article will be insightful, but it cannot be stated with certainty based on those premises. It must be inferred.

Audiences and Logical Arguments

Okay, so why is this important?  It’s important because your audience is applying deductive and inductive reasoning all the time. It happens subconsciously, but they are doing it before you start speaking, while you speak, and after you’ve finished.

Let’s consider an example.

Example Scenario: You are trying to convince your audience to try a new weight-loss diet.

• You claim that the new diet reduces hunger. (premise A)
• You claim that reducing hunger will reduce caloric intake. (premise B)
• You claim that reducing caloric intake will cause weight loss. (premise C)
• You conclude that the new diet will cause weight loss.
  (This is a sound, deductive conclusion which must be true if premises A, B, and C are true.)

What could your audience be thinking?

• Every diet I have tried in the past has failed miserably. (premise D)
• This new diet is like those failed diets. (premise E)
• Therefore, this new diet will fail miserably.
  (This is a reasonable inductive conclusion drawn from premises D and E.)

Because their own conclusion is based on strong, emotional experiences (i.e. a failed diet is emotional), it has high pathos and probably trumps your conclusion. Since your audience has to resolve these conflicting conclusions, they will look to your arguments for flaws. Although your deductive conclusion is sound, they will doubt your premises:

• “I’m always hungry when I am on a diet!” (counters premise A)
• “But if my caloric intake drops, I won’t have enough energy to exercise, and I’ll gain weight!” (counters premise C)

How can you be persuasive in this challenging scenario? Your success depends on your ability to simultaneously make your argument stronger and competing arguments weaker.

For example:

• You can boost your argument by providing supporting facts, diet research, or even your personal success story with the new diet.
• You also must show why this new diet is unlike all those past failed diets. If successful, you would significantly cast doubt on premise E, and their entire inductive argument.

Kill Two Birds with a Single Stone: Commonplaces

It may seem impossible to build a strong argument when you’ve got to compete against a lifetime of beliefs and premises that your audience has previously formed. You may wonder how you can persuade anyone of anything.

The answer: commonplaces.

Commonplaces are simply beliefs which are widely held. Commonplaces often represent “shared wisdom”, and come from many sources. For example:

• Family members may agree that “eating dinner together every day keeps us strong”.
  • This commonplace would make it hard for you to convince them to join a club that meets in the dinner hour.
• Organizations may have core values which include “communication is key to our success”.
  • This commonplace means that they are particularly receptive to ideas which promise to improve organizational communication.
• Society at large generally believes that “freedom of speech is a good thing”.
  • This commonplace would be a good starting point to persuade members of your school board not to ban controversial classics from the school library.

There are two keys to using commonplaces in your speeches:

1. Commonplaces can be used as (often unstated) premises in your speeches. You can use them just as you would use any other fact or claim.
2. When your commonplaces are different from your audience’s commonplaces, use theirs, not yours!

A wonderful example of this second principle is provided by Jay Heinrichs in Thank you for Arguing, page 101:

Suppose you want to encourage students graduating from an elite private liberal arts college to enlist in the military. Use the audience’s commonplaces, not the military’s. Instead of “A strong nation is a peaceful nation,” say, “Our armed forces can use independent, critical thinkers.”

When you use your audience’s commonplaces as your premises, your arguments appear much, much stronger. You don’t have to convince them to adopt a completely new viewpoint; rather, you are simply encouraging them to take what they already believe (the commonplace) and apply it to a new scenario.

Okay, I’ll Use Commonplaces. Anything Else?

Unfortunately, there’s more to it than that. Using audience commonplaces is just one particularly strong technique.

In general, you can develop strong logos by following three general principles:

1. Make it Understandable
   Whatever arguments you employ, they have to be easily understood by the audience before they can be persuasive.
2. Make it Logical
   Make sure your arguments stand up under the deductive and inductive reasoning that your audience will be using. Make sure your premises don’t have holes in them, and have a strategy for addressing competing arguments which your audience already believes.
3. Make it Real
   Premises which are based on concrete and specific facts and examples tend to be accepted quicker than premises which are abstract and general. The more easily your premises are accepted, the more easily your conclusions will be as well.

Why is Logos Critical for Speakers?

Preconceptions are not easily pushed aside. If your presentation is hard to follow, or if your arguments are fairly weak, your audience will find it easy to dismiss your ideas.

Sound, logical arguments, on the other hand, are hard for your audience to ignore. When combined with good ethos and pathos, strong logos will cause all but the most stubborn audience members to give strong consideration to your ideas.

The Circular Relationship between Logos and Ethos

By demonstrating logos with strong, logical arguments, your audience will tend to see you as knowledgeable and prepared. This, in turn, raises your ethos (because, after all, only someone with pure intentions would work so hard to prepare such a convincing argument).

Similarly, speakers with high ethos tend to receive less opposition when they present logical arguments. Their facts and claims are more easily believed.

Work on both traits, and you will be much more persuasive.

How do you Establish Logos?

There are many specific ways to establish logos throughout your speech, and we’ve hinted at some of them already in this article.  We examine some of these methods in greater detail in the next article of this series.

Similar Articles You May Like... 17 Easy Ways to Be a More Persuasive Speaker Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Speech Critique: Dan Pink (TED 2009) Presentation Power: Four Ways to Persuade Book Review: Thank You For Arguing (Jay Heinrichs)

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

2300 years ago, Aristotle wrote down the secret to being a persuasive speaker, the secret which forms the basis for nearly every public speaking book written since then.

Do you know the secret?

If you don’t, you might be wondering what a 2300-year-old theory has to do with public speaking in the year 2010.

In a word — everything!

In this article, you’ll learn what ethos, pathos, and logos are (the secret!), and what every speaker needs to understand about these three pillars of public speaking.

What are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos?

So, what are ethos, pathos, and logos?

In simplest terms, they correspond to:

• Ethos: credibility (or character) of the speaker
• Pathos: emotional connection to the audience
• Logos: logical argument

Together, they are the three persuasive appeals. In other words, these are the three essential qualities that your speech or presentation must have before your audience will accept your message.

Origins of Ethos, Pathos, Logos — On Rhetoric by Aristotle

Written in the 4th century B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Aristotle compiled his thoughts on the art of rhetoric into On Rhetoric, including his theory on the three persuasive appeals.

Many teachers of communication, speech, and rhetoric consider Aristotle’s On Rhetoric to be a seminal work in the field. Indeed, the editors of The Rhetoric of Western Thought: From the Mediterranean World to the Global Setting call it “the most important single work on persuasion ever written.” It is hard to argue this claim; most advice from modern books can be traced back to Aristotle’s foundations.

In The Classic Review, Sally van Noorden points to George Kennedy’s modern translation as the standard reference text for studying On Rhetoric. Kennedy’s translation is the source that I use. (At the time of this writing, it is available from amazon.com for $24.56, 18% off the list price.)

Ethos

Before you can convince an audience to accept anything you say, they have to accept you as credible.

There are many aspects to building your credibility:

• Does the audience respect you?
• Does the audience believe you are of good character?
• Does the audience believe you are generally trustworthy?
• Does the audience believe you are an authority on this speech topic?

Keep in mind that it isn’t enough for you to know that you are a credible source. (This isn’t about your confidence, experience, or expertise.) Your audience must know this. Ethos is your level of credibility as perceived by your audience.

We will define ethos in greater detail, and we will study examples of how to establish and build ethos.

Pathos

Pathos is the quality of a persuasive presentation which appeals to the emotions of the audience.

• Do your words evoke feelings of … love? … sympathy? … fear?
• Do your visuals evoke feelings of compassion? … envy?
• Does your characterization of the competition evoke feelings of hate? contempt?

Emotional connection can be created in many ways by a speaker, perhaps most notably by stories. The goal of a story, anecdote, analogy, simile, and metaphor is often to link an aspect of our primary message with a triggered emotional response from the audience.

We will study pathos in greater detail, and look at how to build pathos by tapping into different audience emotions.

Logos

Logos is synonymous with a logical argument.

• Does your message make sense?
• Is your message based on facts, statistics, and evidence?
• Will your call-to-action lead to the desired outcome that you promise?

We will see why logos is critical to your success, and examine ways to construct a logical, reasoned argument.

Which is most important? Ethos? Pathos? or Logos?

Suppose two speakers give speeches about a new corporate restructuring strategy.

• The first speaker — a grade nine student — gives a flawless speech pitching strategy A which is both logically sound and stirs emotions.
• The second speaker — a Fortune 500 CEO — gives a boring speech pitching strategy B.

Which speech is more persuasive? Is the CEO’s speech more persuasive, simply because she has much more credibility (ethos)?

Some suggest that pathos is the most critical of the three. In You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard, Bert Decker says that people buy on emotion (pathos) and justify with fact (logos). True? You decide.

Aristotle believed that logos should be the most important of the three persuasive appeals. As a philosopher and a master of logical reasoning, he believed that logos should be the only required persuasive appeal. That is, if you demonstrated logos, you should not need either ethos or pathos.

However, Aristotle stated that logos alone is not sufficient. Not only is it not sufficient on its own, but it is no more important than either of the two other pillars. He argued that all three persuasive appeals are necessary.

Is he right? What do you think?

Next in this Series…

In the next article of this series, we examine ethos in greater detail.

Similar Articles You May Like... Presentation Power: Four Ways to Persuade Book Review: Thank You For Arguing (Jay Heinrichs) Speech Critique: Dan Pink (TED 2009) 17 Easy Ways to Be a More Persuasive Speaker What is Logos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.