Ethos, in general, utilizes ethics by definition. This appeal is utilized in order to help convince someone through persuasion. This helps to strengthen the credibility by utilizing practices of social norms including a culture’s beliefs or customs within a group (YourDictionary). For my particular essay regarding diabetes, I can incorporate ethos by encouraging people to become more educated about the disease. Additionally, I can use ethos to help the audience identify and recognize how they can adjust their own beliefs to change their lifestyles in order to try to dodge any health issues related to diabetes and becoming diagnosed with the disease.
People need not be concerned that diabetes can ruin their lives. They need to be persuaded that simple changes in their lifestyles can help them control diabetes and even prevent the onset of this disease. Exercising and changing of the diet can be two major factors that can help combat diabetes before it does set in. Preventing it is much easier than coping with it and once a person has it, it is incurable. It is just manageable. It is important to appeal to the audience in a way that they will want to change their lifestyle and focus on living a healthier journey through life. Persuading the reading audience about diabetes will help to educate the readers about what other chronic diseases could accompany diabetes.
Ethos can be utilized to help encourage those who do not understand what exactly diabetes is and to encourage them to find additional resources and information that they can use to find facts, statistics, and other resources about diabetes. The goal when using ethos as a tactic to persuade people into changing behaviors is to encourage people to look beyond the article in order to seek other resources. These people may not be prepared to go to a healthcare professional yet but they can see what other people are doing to help self-manage diabetes. In fact, ethos can actually be used to encourage those who are living with diabetes or are susceptible to diabetes to learn how to manage the disease themselves or to find out if they should avoid certain foods and change their lifestyle.
References
LoveToKnow, Corp. (n.d.) Examples of Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Retrieved February 18, 2016
