Rhetorical appeals of Pastor Stanly and Ahmed Deedat in great open debate “Is Jesus God?”

ABSTRACT

Rhetorical appeal is the art of public speaking which is used by the speaker to persuade and to convince the hearer through the establishment of ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the credibility or trustworthiness which must be established by the speaker so that the hearer believes that the speaker is qualified enough to speak on a given topic. The ethos will be useless if it is not supported with logos which prove an argument and claim through logical reasoning. When the speaker makes an argument and claim, he or she has to deliver it with pathos, the powerful words which may arouse the emotion of the hearer.

The present study aims at investigating the rhetorical appeals used by Pastor Stanley in great open debate “Is Jesus God?” The researcher needs to answer the rhetorical appeals used by both the speakers and the process of rhetorical appeals on the debate. The researcher selects the debate as the object of the research because it certainly contains those three appeals: ethos, logos, and pathos. The researcher aims to explore the rhetorical appeals of the two debaters based on the research questions by using the theory of Aristotelian Rhetorical appeals such ethos, logos and pathos.

The descriptive qualitative method is used in conducting the research. The researcher describes and explains the rhetorical appeals employed by Pastor Stanley and Ahmed Deedat on the debate. The researcher collects the data which are taken from the debate only. There are at least three steps used by the researcher in analyzing the data. First, classifying the data associated with the theory of Aristotle. Second, analyzing the data by using the theory. Third, discussing and interpreting the data finding concerning with the rhetorical appeals. Finally, the researcher concludes the result of the analysis on rhetorical appeals.

Based on 29 data finding presented and analyzed in this study, it can be concluded that both Pastor Stanley and Ahmed Deedat employ the Aristotelian rhetorical appeals such as ethos, logos, pathos with the same focus. Pastor Stanley gives special focus on logos to make his arguments and claims more convincing. He then uses his best second technique namely pathos to make the audiences get touched to accept what he argues. He does not use ethos more on his speech. On the other hand, Ahmed Deedat also uses more logos in his speech rather than ethos and pathos. He demonstrates the logical arguments such as deductive and inductive reasoning. He also supports the arguments and claims with supporting details such as testimony, analogy, and statistic. He also reveals his ethos, his second best technique, at the beginning of the speech. Yet he uses less pathos in his speech of the debate.