ARCS pg 230

Ethos is the character or reputation of a rhetor. Ethos must be established with an audience using intelligence and appeals. I read several articles from an assortment of magazines ranging from GQ to Forbe's. In Lauren Sherman's article America's Downsized Cities in Forbe's Magazine, she used Bruce Sprinsteen, Billy Joel, and John Mellencamp as a source of reference describing city's losses in population; this directly related and piqued interest in probably most of her readers. The Coffee Fix: Can the $11,000 Clover Machine Save Starbucks, an article found in WIRED magazine where author Matthew Honan used many witness' quotations and catchy slang like "pricey" and refers to the coffee as being "Jessica Alba hot". These descriptions appeal to readers that are young and 'hip'. Goodwill towards readers is established through these applications to what they find interesting and attractive. In the advice column of articles found in Cosmopolitan magazine, Six Ways to Train Your Boyfriend may be found to lack ethos, at least it did for me, because I feel that such widely read material for women should be realistic, helpful, and positive; not material that suggests human relationships should develop similar to the way humans and animals interact.

Ethnographic Report Additional Questions

How long does it take for you to feel like you've educated yourself enough about the business you're writing for?
How long does it take to write the quaterly report?
How long does the speech take?
Before you begin a project how much time do you spend outside of the office brainstorming for it?
Do you ever get on a roll and work for hours on end, or in contrast, get writer's block?

"Kairos" is the right rhetorical moment, it is a special notion of space and/or time; situational time, similar to opportunity. In my book, this window of time is compared to a sprinter who knows just when to accelerate in order to beat their competition during a race. While reading an article on CNN.com today about Rhianna and Chris Brown's relationship, the author used kairos at the right time when she introduced why victims of abusive relationships go back to the perpatrator. Reasons include the period after an abusive event where apologies and over-compensating acts take place, and how instinctively humans who are attached emotionally have to stay in the relationship in order to survive. The subject came about smoothly within the article.