In classical rhetoric, there's a specific type of research that we employ. That's called discovery or invention. And those are very apt terms, because in the process of conducting rhetorical research, we're discovering the ideas and facts and verbal techniques that we're going to use to help develop our argument. And secondly, we will be inventing very specific ways to present our information in a powerful and compelling way. There are two key goals in conducting rhetorical research. The first is the process of developing your overall communication strategy, including communication goals and objectives.
And next, it's selecting the ideas, the concepts, the verbal techniques that you'll use in your messaging, and which should tie to your specific communication situation. rhetorical research involves identifying what's called proofs or appeals. You Each of these areas is going to help us identify against specific ideas that we'll use in our overall communication strategy and in specific messages. In rhetorical research, we focus on three key areas. And these are terms you may have heard before, ethos, logos, and pathos. ethos refers to the ethical appeal, which is where you attempt to build up your character and credibility.
Logos is where we base our position and our messaging on logical reasoning. And pathos is the emotional appeal, where we attempt to identify ways to arouse our audience's passions in order to persuade them. Now the next three lessons we'll look at each of these appeals individually. Later, we'll also talk about how to pull all that information together in terms of developing specific messages and an overall communication strategy. So let's sum up rhetorical research directly supports the development of your Overall communication strategy. Next, your research should identify messaging opportunities based on three key areas.
Ethos, building believability in the message source, logos, leveraging logic and pathos, which is evoking emotions in your audience. Lastly, rhetorical research should always focus on your particular communication situation. Now in the next lesson, we'll look at the first of these proofs, ethos or the process of building believability in the message source. Whether that sources yourself someone on whose behalf you're working or even a product