Notes for February 18

Pathos

I. Pathos, for ancient rhetoricians, had simply to do with “the arousal or expression of emotions” (Crowley and Hawhee 246).

A. Emotional appeals in the persuasive context are different from “appetites, such as pleasure and pain” (246).

B. Emotion is not the counterpart to reason; we cannot separate the head from the heart.

C. Ancient rhetoricians argued that emotions were ways of knowing or markers that helped a speaker or author know how to reason with an audience.

II. Aristotle argues that to use pathos as rhetorical proof (1) “we must understand the state of mind of people who are angry, joyful, or indignant; (2), we must know who (and how) can excite these emotions in people; (3) we must understand the reasons for which people become emotional” (251).

A. Crowley and Hawhee argue that we do not enter the state of mind called “anger” without a reason (251).

B. If there is a clear association in space and time between emotion and the object of one’s emotion then emotions intensify.


C. The relation of spatial proximity to emotional intensity also has to do with social hierarchy; Aristotle: “People think they are entitled to be treated with respect by those inferior in birth, in power, in virtue, and generally in whatever they themselves have much of” (252).

D. We also know that emotions may be more intensely felt if they are shared with others (252); we might be caught up in the emotions of an event through a “sharing of worlds.”

E. Second, we must know who (and how we) can excite these emotions in people; Aristotle suggests that we study the people making up our audiences (255).

1. We get to know our audience and their willingness to change through emotion by identifying ranges of attitudes: from hostility to indifference to acceptance.

2. Muzafer Sherif and Social Judgment Theory (1961).

III. Composing passionate proofs

A. “Rhetors who can imagine the emotions evoked by a scene may stimulate similar emotions in their audiences by deploying the power of enargeia, a figure in which rhetors picture events so vividly that they seem actually to be taking place before the audience” (258).

1. Narrating a story in order to encourage the audience to engage our world: describing tastes, smells, sounds, and actions.

2. John Lucaites and Robert Hariman in their article, “Visual Rhetoric, Photojournalism, and Democratic Public Culture” argue that public images, which we often find in the news, function in different kinds of ways:

a. reflect social knowledge and dominant ideologies.
b. shape and mediate understanding of specific events and periods in history.
c. influence political behavior and identity.
d. provide inventional resources for subsequent kinds of action.

3. Take for example different iconic imagery from the civil rights movement: http://grumpyvegan.com/images/blog/civil-rights-dogs.jpg.

B. Another way to create emotional intensity is through honorific or pejorative language, reflecting value judgments.

a. Honorific language treats people and things respectfully.

b. Pejorative language disparages and downplays people and things.

C. Write a movie review, incorporating discussions on ethos, pathos, and writing about creative work.