Examples Of Ethos In Letter From Birmingham Jail

Using ethos and logos correctly goes a long way of convincing someone.
To establish ethos, arguments must attain three things: credibility, authority, and unselfish motives. Together, Martin Luther King has an excellent display of ethos in his letter, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail”. King “came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause … Struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice” (1963) His dream of equality is not selfish at all. He goes on to explain his experience being black, being segregated and treated badly as if his people was an exile in their own land. Containing personal experiences and knowing this topic very well, King has an authority to speak. He affirms his credibility by showing he has done his homework by referencing to hard evidence like Jesus Christ, Thomas Jefferson, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther to support his own cause. Once

In doing so, they used 3 different logical structures in their arguments: precedent, degree, and analogies. Tim Cook debated with a constructive argument, “to guarantee such a powerful tool isn’t abused and don’t fall into the wrong hands is to never create it” (The Guardian, 2016). This is an example of degree argument, as the audience will automatically agree with any arguments with less of bad things because it is good. Apple knows there are no other cases like this one, so there’s nothing to compare to. Letting the government into the iPhone only this one time can set a dangerous precedent that can potentially force Apple to force open every iPhone in the future at government request. This became a heated legal battle, granting the access in their products for law enforcement was compared to “a political question” by Apple with an analogy (Yadron,