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1.1 Research Background
Rhetoric is a traditional discipline with a long history. Although frustrated ormisinterpreted from time to time, it has experienced tremendous glories and never lostits power of influencing people and institutions throughout the ages. Rhetoric can beunderstood in various ways; however, first and foremost, it is the art of persuasion.Western classical rhetoric has summarized five canons in preparing a persuasivespeech or achieving persuasion: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery.Invention, as the first stage of composing, is the most important. In order to formulateand present arguments persuasively, speakers are supposed to apply three appeals:ethos, pathos and logos. The first appeal, which is the focus of this paper, “depends onthe personal character of the speaker” (Aristotle, 1954, p. 24). Proposed by Aristotle,ethos continues to be a key concept of Western contemporary rhetoric. But althoughAristotle reasonably offered this concept three elements—good sense, good moralcharacter and goodwill (ibid, p. 91), he failed to designate for them clear referents,resulting in considerably weak operability. Quite a few modern researchers havespecified or extended ethos somehow; their interpretations, however, have not beenwidely recognized, which prompts the present thesis for a further inquiry into thisconcept.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
Based upon an anatomy of Aristotle’s ethos, and the contemporary inquiries, thisthesis aims at clarifying the key elements of ethos and their respective basicsub-elements, so as to construct a concise hierarchical system of ethos. This ethossystem is expected to be more operable and interpretive in both rhetorical practice andrhetorical criticism. The paper will mainly resolve the vagueness of Aristotle’s threeelements of ethos: good sense, good moral character and goodwill, via extracting fromCrowley (1994), Cockcroft (1992), McGuire (1985), etc. some basic subelements foreach of the three, in a justifiable way. To achieve this objective, the related chapters inAristotle’s Rhetoric will be closely reexamined; interpretation and extension of ethosby ancient and contemporary scholars will be carefully investigated; and six passagesfrom three genres of advertisement, preface, speech will be selected (via purposivesampling in qualitative research), and analyzed in detail for the testing of thishierarchical system of ethos.
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Chapter TwoLITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous Researches on Rhetorical Criticism
Rhetorical criticism is becoming increasingly prevalent in North America. Yuan(2012) has introduced the research status of it in detail. According to her, manyuniversities have opened RC courses for both undergraduates and postgraduates. Quitea few textbooks have been published and exerting their influences, such as RhetoricalCriticism and Theory in Practice (Pierce, 2003), The Art of Rhetorical Criticism(Kuypers, 2005), Modern Rhetorical Criticism (Hart &Daughton, 2005, 3rdedition),Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice (Foss, 2009, 4thedition) and Readings inRhetorical Criticism (Burgchardt, 2010, 4thedition), which is regarded as “the best andmost comprehensive collection of the major essays in rhetorical criticism currentlyavailable”(by Angela Ray in Northwestern University). In add本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。