The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

94 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 4 lessen poverty, and reduce crime; from the private perspective, he asserts that it would lead to greater health, higher chances of employment, and a better standard of life. In light of these stated benefits, he calls Americans to invest in the future of their posterity by reestablishing higher standards of educational attainment. Ross has effectively designed his argument to appeal to the concerns of the contemporary American citizen; in a reasonable yet impassioned and urgent tone, he connects greater investment in higher education with achieving the foremost goals of today’s social and political scene to create a powerful pathos, backing his claim with a large body of first-hand evidence, which forms a solid ethos and provides just the right amount of logos to make his argument seem reasonable. Ross shows an impressive understanding of the contemporary political discourse in how he exploits it to form his pathos; he draws his audience to his side of the debate by appealing to their sense of national pride and their concerns about the current state and future of the country. Though his argument is unlikely to firmly convince a scholarly audience due to scarcity of outside references and general failure to cite sources of information, it is well designed to accomplish its intended purpose. Ross’s tone is especially well-suited to add subconscious credibility to his argument, subtly creating both ethos and pathos. By using qualifiers such as “in some significant measure” and limiting the scope of his claims, he presents his argument in an informative and reasonable light yet speaks with a great deal of urgency and strength of purpose; this works to pacify and gain the interest of the audience, though they may not initially agree with him, making them willing to listen to what he has to say (4). After he has gained their attention, Ross focuses every word and the entire structure of his argument on creating the impression of patriotism and a genuine interest for the common good. He refers to America with terms such as “democratic” and “great” on multiple occasions and draws on a vocabulary of social progress and consequences, using positive terms such as “better” and “stronger” to refer to the results of his proposed investment and negative terms such as “dangerous” and “disaster” to refer to the status quo of decreasing emphasis on higher education (4, 5, 8, 13, 15). In addition to creating an appeal to the audience’s patriotism, this serves to polarize the issue in favor of his perspective. His use of we to refer to both himself