Reasoning it out

Logos, pathos, ethos, and kairos are the four main foundations of any argument, whether they may go together like peas and carrots in an argument or each product sold separately. In Chapter 4 of Everything's an Argument", titled Arguments Based on Facts and Reason: Logos. Logos is the technique of using evidence and statistics to persuade or prove a point. For example, a company's advertisement may say "Buy this toothpaste; 4 out of 5 dentists recommended!" An argument for a cause will use logos to persuade the crowd to support certain rights and beliefs. An example would be a child-abuse ad that has statistics written on the bottom saying "In Germany, more than 300,000 children are sexually abused each year" as a means to stir up shock and immediate attention, although it also irrelevantly demonstrates ethos. Aristotle states that conjuring up any argument consists of two main ingredients: a statement with a proof following. In order to come up with an effective visual logos argument, the issue at hand needs to be stated, followed by evidence to prove the problem is legitimate and to hint as to why the issue needs the attention it deserves.

There are several ways to shape up a logos argument. The first is to use facts. Inevitably facts must be one of the most accurate ways of expressing proof, if not the most accurate. Next we have statistics, which is a type of study that involves surveys, diagrams, graphs, and numbers... LOTS AND LOTS OF NUMBERS. Statistics take facts and opinions from the general audience to obtain a reasonable result that can be closely distinguished as a fact. Surveys and polls come next. These can be considered to fall under the category of statistics. Surveys are a way of getting certain information from a wide crowd by asking each individual a series of questions, and then piecing their answers together and relating the questions. For example, a survey's results may show that most men want to be football players in the future while most females tend to steer towards getting a job at the hair stylist or as a singer. Polls have a subtle difference, but they are commonly shorter than surveys and thus mainly used for political issues, such as presidential elections. Testimonies and narratives come after, with true stories to prove a point. There are also reasoning and common sense, in which, if put in math terms, would be a=b; c=b; therefore a=c, which sometimes can be accurate. Then we have cultural values, such as customs and traditions in a region of the world, which could be another term for facts from sociology. 

My argument about human rights seems more of an ethos argument, but I enjoy working with logical arguments. It does not take a genius to depict a visual logos argument about racial profiling. Thus, I will use logos in my visual argument about racism.