Logos (Logical Appeal)

A quick reminder from the previous page: logos is "the obvious argument." When you are talking about written arguments and speeches, these are the fact- and logic-based claims the author makes. Are they supplying you with facts acquired through research? Statistics? Walking you through the steps of logical reasoning to show you why they are right? These are all examples of logical appeal.

When examining more visually-oriented types of rhetoric, such as advertisements, logical appeals are the facts about what is being sold, such as a car seating five adults comfortably or having a large trunk.

Logical appeals are equally obvious in film. If film is an argument for you perceiving the film the way the filmmaker wants you to, this is the part that is easiest to notice. If someone asks you about a movie, isn't the first thing you tell them about the plot? This is also the part that the filmmaker can be the most certain to get right. You may not find the movie or the acting believable, and you may not respond emotionally the way the filmmaker intends for you to, but he can pretty much count on you thinking the same thing happened in the movie as he did.

As I said back on the first page, it's important to be able to go beyond "what happens" in your discussion of a movie, but it is still good to take an in-depth look at what constitutes a logical appeal in film. If anything, it will show you how important the other appeals are in effectively analyzing film.

In this section we will look at the most obvious rhetorical element of film, the plot, and a slightly-less-obvious but highly related element, a film's chronology.