Foreclosures May Have Made the Housing Crisis Worse

Ethos, pathos, logos. These words are three of the biggest elements in rhetorical analysis. Ethos refers to the credibility of the author in order to support one's claims. Pathos refers to the emotions the author intends to use to influence readers. Lastly, logos is the part of an article that appeals to the reader's logical reasoning.

In today's article, the authors uses all three of these elements to prove their point in which they present that many people believe that banks have been handling foreclosures improperly.

To begin with, the authors use ethos, or their credibility to win the readers support. The article was posted on the Reuters website, which is known as a reliable source of good information. That alone draws the attention of many readers, and helps the authors be more influential.

Next, the authors attempt to appeal to the readers emotion in order to win over the reader. This is the most evident of the three elements in this article, and it is brought to the readers attention very close to the beginning of the article in which it states, using a quote from Barack Obama, that it is shameful that financial institutions have possibly made the housing crisis worse due to improperly processing foreclosures.

The last of the three elements mentioned, logos, appeals to the readers logical reasoning. This element is not used nearly as noticeably as the others, but it is still used. In one particular instance, it uses in its argument that foreclosed homes make up 25 percent of home sales. Using a fact in an argument is a great use of logos, however, this article unfortunately does not have many facts, just opinions.

Using these elements to analyze an article can be very helpful when learning something. One cannot necessarily believe everything he or she reads, but through this analysis, it can be helpful to figure out which is worth more researching.

Refer to the original article here:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69G10J20101017