Key Concepts: Ethos, Genre, Kairos, and Logos

Read the brief sections on ethos, genre, kairos, and logos.

Let’s use these concepts to preview this week’s texts.

1. As we look ahead to reading, listening, and viewing these texts, consider the affordances and constraints of the genre of long-form journalism and the podcast. What does each allow authors/creators to do that some other genre would not? What are the constraints of long-form journalism and the podcast?

2. How do we understand and assess the ethos of these authors? How will they be communicating their ethos? 

3. We often tend to think about logos as the use of facts and statistics, but what else does logos include? What other strategies might these authors use to communicate their message?

4. Kairos has to do with finding or creating the opportune time to circulate a message. Read the titles. Explain how the authors are seizing a kairotic moment. What cultural moment do we find ourselves in that allows conspiracy theories to thrive?

Grading Criteria:

Context relevant

Sophisticated

Posting presents the authors’ ideas, evidence or conclusions accurately, fairly and eloquently. Shows a firm understanding of the implications of each author’s argument(s).

Content Richness (Depth of Analysis)

Sophisticated

Posting fully meets requirements of assignment. Explores implications of chosen ideas for the arts in classical Greece or today in thoughtful and/or original ways. Makes convincing case for why selected key ideas connect (or contradict) two texts, and/or connect (contradict) texts and lectures.

Clarity and Grammar

Sophisticated

Consistently precise and unambiguous wording, clear and lucid sentence structure. All quotations are well chosen, effectively framed in the text and explicated where necessary.