Ethos, pathos y logos: Resignificaciones en el marco de los Estudios del Discurso

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Summary

Aristotle in his Rhetoric (2002) argues that man is not only a rational being, but also responds to emotions, which is why it is essential to address the phenomenon of persuasion. In this way, it establishes that all discourse, if it pretends to influence the audience, must allude, necessarily, to three dimensions: the logos, the êthos and the pathos. Indeed, over the centuries, this disciplinary field has made possible the explanation of the communicative effectiveness of various genres of discourses developed in numerous areas of social practice. In this sense, we understand with Perelman and Olbrechts Tyteca (1989: 34) that Rhetoric is "the study of persuasive techniques that allow to provoke or increase the adhesion of people to the theses presented for their assent". From this perspective, any interaction to be successful must contemplate what can be conceived as a rhetorical situation, a circumstance constituted by the discursive intention of the enunciator -who is constructed in a certain way to achieve its objective-; the topic or subject of the message and the recipient, target of persuasion. Currently, the triad consisting of the notions of êthos, logos and pathos has been rescued with a variable degree of systematicity by researchers in the area of discourse studies, mainly by the French school (Maingueneau, 2002, 2008, 2009, Charaudeau, 2000, 2006, 2011, etc.), to support the analysis of the enunciative scene in the approach to discursive practices and diverse genres (political, advertising, academic, etc.). The purpose of this communication is to make a critical review of these concepts and examine their recurrence in the work of different specialists to develop a state of the art that allows to verify the validity of classical thinking in contemporary theoretical-methodological approaches.

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