“Rhetoric’s business is to find and present the types of reasons that would move interested and reasonable people to assent to a point of view” (qtd. in Hauser 119). As such, the primary foundation of rhetoric, then, is logos because logos is defined as the “process of reasoning with the audience” (119). Two methods provide the audience “good reasons”—or reasons that persuade beliefs and direct actions: (1) providing common ground and (2) drawing conclusions from the judgment of facts.
First, logos is based on what the receivers perceive to have in common with the rhetor. Common reasons connect with the audience; the shared grounds make these arguments move the audience to solidify belief, justify action, or alter views moving forward (119). Second, providing “good reasons” is the judgment of facts, or rather drawing conclusions either specific or to a whole. To interpret facts, we have two techniques called paradigms and enthymemes. Paradigms, more commonly known as inductive reasoning, provide parallel cases upon which we form general conclusions about a whole (122); however, as paradigms can be interpreted various ways by an audience, we lack control over the reasoning of the audience (123).
