Logos, Ethos and Pathos

Logos

In his “Crisis of Confidence” speech, Jimmy Carter appeals to logos when he references statistics that highlight the Americans’ lack of confidence in their country’s future: “Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world”. However, these comments might also come off as criticism rather than motivational, as Carter intends them to be.

Carter appeals to logos once more when he mentions how bad the energy problem is: “In little more than two decades we’ve gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof”. This is an attempt to appeal to the reason of American citizens and make them aware of the gravity of the problem and of the urgent need to act.

Ethos 

Carter appeals to ethos from the start of his speech when he re...