DIY's Means of Persuasion

It is very interesting to look at DIY from the perspective of Aristotle's means of persuasion, namely Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, to decipher exactly how the community presents itself, and why. 

The goal of argumentative writing is to persuade your audience that your ideas are valid, or more valid than someone else's. According to Aristotle, rhetoric is "the ability, in each particular case, to see the available means of persuasion." These are:

• Pathos (Emotional): The appeal to the emotions of the audience. Language choice affects the audience's emotional response, and emotional appeal can effectively be used to enhance an argument.
• ex: "Those foreigners took our jerbs! American jerbs!"
• Ethos (Credibility): The appeal based on the source's credibility, the speaker's/author's authority. Ethos driven arguments rely on the reputation of the Author.
• ex: an expert witness in a trial.
• Logos (Logic): Appeal to reason or the rational argument supported by arguments or justification. Aristotle's favorite, this appeal includes deductive and inductive reasoning.
• ex: statistic-heavy essay about why people should recycle.

The Pathetic appeal of DIY would be to illustrate and condemn the negative effects that consumerism has on our environment and on us as individuals. This may be done by showing pictures of fluffy bunnies whose forest homes have been cut down or the materialistic fad-crazed 13 year old who makes us all wonder where childhood has gone. This is possibly the least present of the three appeals within the community itself, but it is one of the most strongly supported arguments for news outlets and serves as something of an explanation and an inroad for those outside the community wishing to or wondering why they would enter.

The DIY appeal to Ethos would be to call upon the masters, the craftsmen, the experienced craftspeople, and have them explain why they and we should choose making over buying. (for example, my quoting Megan Nicolay on the this page) By showing us what the experienced and the determined gurus of DIY have accomplished, it gives the beginners hope and the intermediates something to strive for with their own creations.

The DIY appeal to Logos is very similar to that of Pathos, which would again to illustrate the negative effects that consumerism has on our environment and on us as individuals. The first may be done by giving statistics on how much energy goes into making a single t-shirt, or how many pounds of salvageable textiles are thrown into landfills each year. The second might explain the joys of having clothing that truly fits your own body or having furniture and decorations which are not some mass-produced pottery barn piece, but instead something you lovingly crafted with your own hands and which represents your personal aesthetic as nothing else could.