Section 1: Introduction to Community

Zain Mukati

The National Debate Honors Society is a community which aims to give members

presentation and argumentative skills that are essential to almost every career. For example,

engineers rarely talk to consumers but, it is quite possible that an engineer will have to present

his part in a project or design and thus will need to have adequate presentation skills to

effectively communicate his thoughts. Having presentation skills is attractive and thus the debate

community attracts a multitude of different people, ranging from those who want to have a

successful career in the future to those who simply want to become more confident in their

demeanor. Debate revolves around literacy and literate activities but is still considered to be a

community of practice. To give a better understanding of this practice, heres a quick summary

of how debates work: there are 2 sides of a topic, pro and con, each side must try to convey to a

panel of 3 judges why their side is better than the opponents and to obtain two of the three judges

votes.

Reading and writing are of utmost importance within debate. Even though the community

is known as National Debate Honors Society, it is impossible to win a debate without having a

strong speech written beforehand which not only addresses all aspect of the given topic, but also

has credible evidence to support the points that are made. But having a strong speech doesn't

automatically win any debates. You must be persuasive and confident when relaying the

information found in the speech so that the judges support your side of the argument. For

example, my first tournament, I spent over two weeks writing my speech, but I didn't practice

debating, as a result, I got crushed by someone whose speech was completely countered by my

own simply because I couldn't make a convincing argument. The potential of this happening is
quite high, which is why every member must have a strong understanding of how to effectively

convey a point while simultaneously attacking an opponent claim.

Those found within the debate community all have an agenda to accomplish whether it be

trying to get a good grade in the class or simply trying to make their school look good. These

members of the community include a multitude of literacy sponsors ranging from teachers and

students, to the writers of the articles being argued. These sponsors contribute significantly to the

community because they not only teach those who lack the skills to debate, but they also provide

information that is essential to the topics that are argued on within the rounds. There are some

literacy sponsors such as champion briefs which aim to make a profit from the debate

community from selling research that their employees did to lazy students. It is best to know

which sponsors are reliable if you are a part of the community.

The debate community carries its own set of values and mannerisms which revolve

around being confident, respectful, and dominant. These values heavily come into play when

giving a speech. Keeping these values consistent can give you an upper hand in a debate,

especially when combined with the appeals of pathos, ethos and logos.

Section 2: Introduction to Text

The text for my community is a Guide to Public Forum Debate. This guide would

typically be given to someone just starting out in the debate community so that they can get a

decent understanding of the rules that are in place during a tournament. This text is essential for

the debate community because it allows a member who is new to be able to assimilate into the

community as fast as possible. It quickly covers all essential details that are needed to compete

without including anything that is unnecessary. The manner it does this in is simple and avoids
jargon so that the audience unfamiliar with debate is not intimidated.

The rhetor of the text seems to be experienced with debate and simplifies concept to

avoid intimidating new members of the community which gives the impression that he/she is a

teacher or coach of a debate team. The intended audience is new members of debate who want a

deeper understanding of the community, but sometimes older members will need to check their

understanding and will thus go back to refer to the text. The exigence is the lack of

understanding that most new members have to debate. The constraints of the article are that the

sections cannot be too long to prevent the reader from losing interest in debate or be intimidated

by how little they know, thus the rhetor has to give a large amount of information to fulfill the

exigence but he must condense this information for the sake of the message getting across to his

audience. If this is not done well, potential members of will lose interest and join other

communities, I have witnessed this myself when the debate teacher had a poor grasp on her

students and thus lost most members who intended to join the class. The text fulfills its exigence,

but it does lack some elements which could potentially cause its intended audience to have more

interest towards its message. When reading through a text and seeing bland colors such as grey

(the color of this article), it greatly reduces interest. The article also lacks any sort of assistance

for debaters with handicaps which might make those who have hearing, or sight problems avoid

debate entirely. If implemented, these two factors would make the text significantly more

appealing and accessible to potential members. Overall, the text does a good job at fulfilling its

exigence for most of the intended audience.

Section 3: Methods

Since I decided that I was going to use the three rhetorical appeals of Pathos, Ethos, and

Logos, I wanted to first have a strong definition of all three of these terms. Pathos is an appeal to
emotion, Ethos is and appeal to credibility, and Logos is an appeal to logic or reasoning (Downs,

2017). Once I defined these terms I realized that I need to find an article in which all three of

these concepts are utilized. But I could not find an article relating to my community that utilized

all three of these rhetorical appeal, so I decided to settle for a guide that teaches how to debate

and utilizes two out of three of the rhetorical appeals (ethos and logos). The thing that I found

interesting about these three appeals is that they are also analytics in and of themselves which I

was happy about because it made that part of the process a little easier. I found that the appeals

work as analytics in a scholarly article which discussed how to read and write analytically for an

AP Exam (Jolliffe, 2008).

When going through the article I realized that it was referring to the appeals as both

analytical and rhetorical appeal which made the process significantly easier for me as a result

due to the difficulty I was having to find other analytics that have to do with Pathos, Ethos, and

Logos. Another difficulty I encountered while trying to make the analytics work was the lack

pathos within the article, but then I realized that I could use this to my benefit by simply talking

about how pathos could have been used more effectively and how its inclusion within the article

would have benefitted its rhetor in getting his points across to his intended audience. What made

this individual paper a little easier was the fact that I was doing it alone. Even though I had a

great group of hard-working people, we all had clashing ideals for how we should go about

writing the paper and presenting, but because of working individually, I did not have to deal with

the contrasting ideas that often occur when collaborating with others. By the end of the research

and writing of this paper, I feel as if Ive learned significantly more from writing the whole paper

on my own rather than splitting the work with others.

To recap, the analytics that we used in our group were Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. When

utilizing these analytics as way of going through an article, I found more within the text than I

would have if I didn't know what to look for and was just going through the text. Each analytic

helped me find different details from the others.

For Ethos, the first thing I noticed was near the header of the text where an official

definition of Public Forum Debate was given and underneath it was the official website of the

National debate Honors society. This is significant because it indicates that the text was written

from someone who found the community of practice and thus is well-informed on the topic of

the article. Another significant detail I found that pushed the Ethos of the article even further was

the use of the community's name in the form of a footer on the bottom of each pages. These two

details prove the articles connection to the community of practice and establish the credibility of

the writer.

Logos makes up a critical part of this article's foundation. When going through each

section, the rhetor not only explains how the aspects of debate function, but also the most logical

approach to these aspects. For example, when referring to the Crossfire, the rhetor states:

Good questions are brief and good answers must meet the question, this statement is not a part

of the actual rules of debate and but, the statement is still significant because it is logically the

best approach to a crossfire to improve the likelihood of success (Guide to Public Forum,

2009). The rhetor had proved his appeal to Ethos and Logos, but did not have any appeal to

Pathos. The use of Pathos would make the article have more significance especially when used

alongside the other two rhetorical appeals. Pathos tends to leave stronger feelings on most people

than Ethos and Logos and thus causes the intended audience to see more significant in the article.
These rhetorical appeals demonstrate different pieces that compose the article and allow our

group to see the paper from different perspective that otherwise would not be seen. When these Commented [ZM1]: Inserted more details

rhetorical appeals are combined, an appeal is created that suits most audiences of the article. It is

essential that this is done simply because many different audiences have different appeals that

are more effective on them. An example of where the appeal to emotion can occur is within the

following statement: A debater who attempts to dominate or be rude to his opponent will lose

points.. If the rhetor to this article gave talk about how people feel oppressed when the opponent

is dominating them while also bringing up the negative view it gives to the judges when acting in

this manner, it will not only get the point across, but it would cause the intended audience to

remember that they are debating against people, people who have feelings and thus they are more

likely to stay orderly during rounds. These three analytics make a strong combination and can

appeal to all members of the intended audience.

Section 5: Discussion and Meaning

Pathos, Ethos, and Logos are significant analytical and rhetorical concepts that increase

the validity, understanding, and connection of the article to its intended audience. Two of three

of these rhetorical concepts directly pertain to the community article and these two are Ethos and

Logos. The two aforementioned concepts greatly increase the knowledge and understanding of

the new members trying to join debate.

Ethos increases the validity, which in turn increases understanding by causing the

intended audience to realize that the rhetor is seasoned within the area they are trying to learn

about. This Ethos is what causes our article to stand out because of it directly pertaining to the
community of practice. Logos on the other hand is used within the text to reason on how one

should go about debating.

Having Logos is beneficial to the text because even though the purpose of the text is to

get an understanding of debate, having reasoning behind why things are done a certain way can

justify the intended audience following the message of the rhetor.

Pathos does not directly pertain to the text but has the potential of enhancing the text and

broadening the scope of those who this article makes an impact on. An appeal to pathos can

typically causes a much larger impact than the other two rhetorical concepts and because it was

not included, the article is not as strong as it could have been and the connection between the

rhetor and its audience is weakened as a result. These concepts help the community when the

members are presenting points to judges for the sake of winning rounds, as a result it is essential

for members of the debate community to not only understand the three rhetorical concepts, but

also learn their uses. Most writing studies scholars can understand the concepts that I have

attempted to portray here, but the significance of this paper to them would be that they could

easily appreciate the format in which these rhetorical concepts are presented in a way that Commented [ZM2]: Implemented more emphasis on
writing studies scholars
anyone, whether involved in the writing scholars community or not can understand the concepts

just because of how simply they are presented. Readers of the article, whether a part of the

intended audience or not, will appreciate knowing Pathos, Ethos, and Logos because of the

benefits it can provide in day to day life. If you can show people your credibility, appeal to their

emotion, and reason with them, interaction will be bound to go in your favor whether you are

presenting for a charity or negotiating a raise with your manager. Knowing how to utilize these

concepts will improve your quality of life and thus they should be understood.
Works Cited

Downs, D. (2017). Rhetoric: making sense of human interaction and meaning-making. In E.

Wardle & D. Downs (Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp. 457-483).

Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Jolliffe, D. (2008). On reading and writing analytically: theory, method, crisis, action plan

[PDF]. Retrieved From: http://jerrywbrown.com/wp-

content/uploads/2015/04/English_Reading_and_Writing_Analytically_SF.pdf#page=9.

Guide to Public Forum Debate (2009). [PDF]. Retrieved From:

https://debate.uvm.edu/dcpdf/PFNFL.pdf