Logos, Ethos and Pathos in Albanian Political Discourse

Abstract

Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that there were three basic ways to persuade an audience of your position: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Even though several new attempts and studies have merged within the field of discourse analysis, the Triad persuading approach is still considered and examined as a crucial and inevitable component of political reasoning. By examining several pre-election political discourses in Albania, we will try to highlight the linguistic means, which are used by each politician to present the three dimensions of the argumentative persuasion – Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. In addition, we aim at comparing the ways that different political leaders build rationale and logical discourses; how they present their own personality; what methods they appeal to impact electorate emotionally.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n4p55