Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Rhetoric and The Westboro Baptist Church.

The Westboro Baptist Church is known as one of the most radical religious groups in the world. They are known primarily for their district hatred towards the LGBTQ community and even have their website domain name set as godhatesfags.com. From picketing military funerals, to protesting against the jewish religion in general, the Westboro Baptist Church will stop at nothing to get their "truth" out to the world.

The first way in which they use rhetoric is through Pathos, or God's truth. By posting videos, disturbing images, and incredibly colorful language on their social media channels and website, they are manipulating religious teachings and Gods word to get out their main points.

The second way in which the Westboro Baptist Church uses rhetoric is though Logos. Maybe a better way to put this would be by saying their "own logos". I say this because their truth is completely different from the actual truth of the world. They internalized the teachings of their church and created their own form of "fact" or Logos. They show this through the speeches and the completely inaccurate 'statistics' and 'facts' that they display.

The third way in which the Westboro Baptist Church uses rhetoric is though Ethos. They try to gain credibility and trust, and it actually does persuade some very weak-minded people. They try to gain authority by being seen at as many different types of events and by being as loud and as close to the center of attention as they can be.

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