Karaoke (singing along to music videos) has swept Taiwan with such force that many people go to singing schools to improve their singing. Three cases in this paper demonstrate how the ethos, or credibility, of the singer is a combination of initial and derived ethos. Who the singer is tends to determine how much attention he or she receives initially. During the performance the ethos can be derived from the difficulty implied in the adopted method of singing (singing without recorded accompaniment, singing with recorded accompaniment only, and singing with recorded accompaniment and vocal), the difficulty of the chosen song, and/or his or her linguistic versatility (whether a singer can sing in different dialects and languages). In a society where the after-dinner speech is often substituted for by after-dinner karaoke, the ethos of the "singer" can be an issue as important as, if not more important than, the ethos of the public speaker when communication processes within it are analyzed. (Eleven references are attached.) (Author/SG)