Rhetoric

All arguments fall somewhere withing the three points of the rhetorical triangle, with most academic arguments lying very close to "logos" and closer to "ethos" than "pathos".

• pathos (emotion): playing to the fears of our audience, inciting hatred of our opponents; also, or invoking positive associations, such as a love of democracy or freedom
• ethos (ethics/character): pointing out injustices, appealing to the opinions of trusted authorities, emphasizing what is right; gaining the reader's trust
• logos (logic): assembling all the relevant evidence (quotations, details, page numbers, statistics), ordering it so that the most convincing points come first, and probing to expose weaknesses in all arguments -- even the ones you think are "right".

In a literature class, informal response papers and productive in-class discussions can revolve around pathos, and ethos is useful for discussing the moral and cultural context in which the works are situated, but when you write major papers, you will primarily be evaluated on your mastery of logos.