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7. Pathetic Proof: Passionate Appeals
Speech is a powerful guide, which by means of the finest and most
invisible body effects the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief
and create joy and nurture pity. . . . Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and
grievous longing come upon its hearers, and at the actions and physical
sufferings of others in good fortunes and in evil fortunes, through the agency
of words, the soul is wont to experience a suffering of its own.
(Gorgias, "Encomium of Helen" 8).
Rhetors can find arguments in the issue itself (logos), and a rhetor's character (ethos)
can be persuasive as well. According to Aristotle, a third kind of intrinsic proof is also
available: rhetors can appeal to human emotion (pathos). In early Greek thought, the term
pathos referred to a passive state we might call “experience”; later, in Greek plays called
“tragedies,” this state came to be associated with suffering. In the fifth century BCE Plato
and Aristotle began to use the term pathos to discuss the emotions in general. “Pathos” is
still used in English to refer to any quality in an experience that arouses emotions, and many
English words are borrowed from the Greek term including “sympathy” and “empathy.”
Speakers of modern English generally use an adjective form, "pathetic," to refer to anything
that is meager, as in the phrase "that's a pathetic excuse." But "pathetic" also refers to the
arousal or expression of emotions, and that's the sense in which we use it here.
Aristotle and Cicero discussed the following sets of emotions: anger/calm, love/hate,
fear/confidence, shame/shamelessness, compassion, pity/indignation, envy/emulation, joy,
and hope (Rhetoric II 2-12; De Oratore II i 203). Emotions should be distinguished from
appetites such as pleasure and pain. They must also be distinguished from values such as
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justice and goodness. However, people do hold values with more or less intensity, and
this intensity is where the rhetorical force of emotional appeals resides. People respond
emotionally when they or those close to them are praised or threatened; rhetorically, they
also respond emotionally when their values are reinforced or threatened.
Like ethos, pathos creates rhetorical disposition. Recall from the last chapter that for
Aristotle, the rhetor’s disposition—how she presents herself— “makes much difference in
regard to persuasion.” As a result, the audience’s disposition toward the speaker or writer, or
to the issue under deliberation—that is, whether one is well or badly disposed to someone or
something—makes a difference as well. As Aristotle put it, “things do not seem the same to
those who are friendly and those who are hostile, nor to the angry and the calm but either
altogether different or different in importance” (II.2.1378a). For Aristotle, then, the rhetorical
situation layers dispositions on dispositions: the rhetor’s and the audience’s dispositions each
shape the other, and this shaping process can even change during the a speech or a piece of
writing.
Of all the ancient kinds of rhetorical proofs, the appeal to the emotions seems
strangest to contemporary rhetors. Perhaps it seems a little shoddy, as well, to appeal to fear,
or hatred, or anger. In our own time people revere reason (at least in theory), and in our
culture a sharp distinction is often made between reason and emotion: if you're emotional,
you're irrational. Reason is associated with mind, and connotes a calm, studied approach to
issues, while emotions are associated with the body--that container for the mind whose
functions we cannot always govern. Hence we assume that emotions can derail reason, or
cause someone to “lose control.” Furthermore, people tend to think of emotions as belonging
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to individuals, like opinions.
These prejudices are inaccurate and unfair. New research in neuroscience suggests
that we can’t think without emotions, and that our emotional responses are intricately tied up
with our beliefs, as well (Damasio). Other research suggests that emotions can be shared
among individuals, as is illustrated by the excitement shared by large crowds at concerts or
sports events or the shared joy felt at a religious gathering (Brennan). And anyone who has
suffered the loss of a loved one knows that grief becomes more intense when shared with
others who are suffering.
The ancients understood all of this, and hence they taught us that rhetorical appeals to
the emotions were very effective. Contemporary advertisers and political spin artists also
understand the important role played by emotion in our responses to their messages. The
most obvious modern use of emotional appeals appears in advertisements that appeal to
consumers' desire for success ("be all you can be;" “just do it!”) or their fear of losing status
in their communities ("don’t let this happen to you!"). But emotional appeals appear in
other sorts of discourse as well. Clearly, the nation’s emotional response to the events of
September 11 played a large role in Americans’ support for the subsequent wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, support that was very strong immediately following the event but that has
dwindled as time passed and the nation’s grief and shock grew more muted. The diminishing
support for these wars, interpreted as retaliation for September 11, suggests to us that as
emotional intensity wanes, so does the persuasiveness of arguments based on emotional
appeals.
For those of us who actually witnessed 9/11, though, accounts or images can still
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evoke the emotions we felt then. In his introduction to an anthology of essays about
September 11, Phil Scraton recounts his own emotional responses on that terrible day, thus
artfully drawing his readers into the scene:
Trying to make sense - emotional, physical, political- of September 11,
I return to my initial reactions and responses. Like so many others across the
world, via satellite I witnessed truly horrifying scenes of scarcely believable
atrocity. Filmed from every conceivable angle the second passenger aircraft
imploded the twin tower. Its nose-cone, having passed through the building,
was instantly engulfed in flames. At that 'live by satellite' moment, the
collapse of the entire World Trade Center inevitable, the realisation dawned
that the dual crashes were no coincidence. Both aircraft had been piloted,
purposefully and accurately, into their targets. As news broke, telling of two
other planes crashing, one into the Pentagon, the second out of control in
Pennsylvania, the immensity and significance of these disasters became
apparent. They had to be the dreadful end-product of effective and efficient
collaboration involving groups working together, carefully planning and
acquiring skills. These were not random targets. The World Trade Center,
bomb damaged just eight years earlier, and the Pentagon represented hugely
symbolic as well as material targets.
In a Verona hotel room we watched the dramatic live transmissions
from downtown Manhattan. Firefighters and rescuers raced into the disaster
zone passing dust-covered, ghost-like workers coming from the opposite
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direction - running or staggering for their lives. Cameras homed in on others
trapped in offices high above the flames, some throwing themselves from
windows to avoid choking or burning to death. As the towers collapsed,
clouds of grey toxic smoke covered all and everything in their path. Then
came the first reports of agonised telephone calls made from one of the planes
and by those facing death trapped in their offices. These were final goodbyes
to loved ones. They reminded me of rescue workers recounting disaster
scenes where the only sounds they could hear, as they listened for potential
survivors, were those of mobile phones ringing from the debris as desperate
relatives tried to make contact. (1)
Scraton’s description is detailed but simple. Such a powerfully evocative event can
effectively do the work of pathos without the need for over-the-top descriptions.
Ancient Teachers on the Emotions
Greek orators could find examples of the persuasive use of emotion in the texts of the
poet Homer, whose two great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were well-known
among the Greek people. In the last book of the Iliad, Homer depicted the Trojan king,
Priam, appealing to Achilles, the Achean hero, to return the body of his son, Hector.
[FIGURE that is in 4e: Priam pleading for the return of the body of Hector]
Remember your own father, Achilles,
in your godlike youth: his years
like mine are many, and he stands upon
the fearful doorstep of old age. He, too,
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is hard pressed, it may be, by those around him,
there being no one able to defend him
from bane of war and ruin. Ah, but he
may nonetheless hear news of you alive,
and so with glad heart hope through all his days
for sight of his dear son, come back from Troy,
while I have deathly fortune. Noble sons
I fathered here, but scarce one man is left me.
Fifty I had when the Acheans came,
nineteen out of a single belly, others
born of attendant women. Most are gone.
Raging Ares cut their knees from under them.
And he who stood alone among them all,
their champion, and Troy's, ten days ago
you killed him, fighting for his land, my prince,
Hector. It is for him that I have come
among these ships, to beg him back from you,
and I bring ransom without stint. Achilles,
be reverent toward the great gods! And take
pity on me, remember your own father.
Think me more pitiful by far, since I
have brought myself to do what no man else
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has done before--to lift to my lips the hand
of one who killed my son. (XXIV 485-506)
Priam first arouses Achilles' sense of filial love by reminding him of his own father, and tries
to arouse his pity for the plight of lonely old men whose sons are missing or dead. Then he
tells how his many children have been slain, hoping to rouse Achilles' pity for his
misfortunes, and he mentions ransom, hoping to stimulate Achilles' greed. He reminds
Achilles of the gods; this is a subtle attempt to make Achilles fearful, since he committed a
serious religious transgression by refusing to bury Hector's body. Finally, he asks Achilles to
pity him for the shameful position in which he, a king, has been placed by being forced to
beg a soldier to return his son's body.
As this passage makes clear, emotional appeals are based on the assumption that
human beings share similar kinds of emotional responses to events: fathers everywhere weep
for lost sons; an old man who has lost his family is pitied by everyone, even his enemies.
While this may not be true across wide cultural differences, it certainly is the case that people
who live in the same community have similar emotional responses. If this were not true,
governments would not be able to incite great numbers of people to volunteer for military
service during wartime (which is an irrational thing to do, after all). In his history of the
Peloponnesian War, Thucydides reported a speech made by Pericles, who had incited the
Athenians to war against the Spartans. When this war did not go well, the people became
angry. Pericles "called an assembly, wanting to encourage them and to convert their angry
feelings into a gentler and more hopeful mood" (II 59). Pericles was only partially successful
in quelling the anger of the people because the war had brought them great suffering. As this
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passage indicates, Pericles was quite aware that rhetoric could arouse or dispel emotional
responses, and that communities could share emotional responses to public events.
Ancient rhetoricians also treated the emotions as ways of knowing, thus associating
them with intellectual processes. Gorgias argued in the "Helen" that the persuasive effect of
verbal seduction is no different from physical force; Helen was blameless no matter whether
she was abducted or whether her seducer simply persuaded her to flee her husband and
country. Indeed, early rhetorical theorists like Gorgias and Plato characterized rhetoric as a
psychagogia, a leader or enchanter of souls. Gorgias argued that, given the right
circumstances (kairos), a rhetor could alter an audience's emotional state of mind and thus
change their assessment of reality, in essence helping them to see the world in new ways.
In other words, the ancients taught that emotions hold heuristic potential. The
emotions even seem to be a means of reasoning: if someone becomes afraid, realizing that
she is in a dangerous situation, she quickly assesses her options and takes herself out of
danger as quickly as she can. Emotions can also move people to action: if someone feels
compassion for someone else, he helps the suffering person.
Early sophistic treatises on rhetoric included topics for appealing to the emotions.
For example, the Rhetoric to Alexander discussed appeals to friendliness, kindliness, and the
like as a means urging an audience to act on behalf of the needy (1439b 15ff.). Since
sophistic manuals were organized according to the parts or divisions of a discourse, they
gave no systematic advice about arousing the emotions but rather included it in their
discussions of introductions and conclusions.
Aristotle seems to have been the first rhetorician to provide a systematic discussion of
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emotional proofs. In Book II of the Rhetoric, he defined emotions as "those things
through which, by undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments" (i 1378a).
This sounds very much like Gorgias’s argument that emotional responses help people to
change their minds. When a person experiences an emotion such as anger, pity, or fear, she
enters a new state of mind in which she sees things differently. If she has become angry at
someone, for example, she sees that person in a different light than she previously did.
Perhaps she is angry with her supervisor because he mistakenly blamed her for something
that was not her fault. Her angry reaction to this event will change her attitude toward her
supervisor. She may even be moved by this new way of thinking to change her behavior
toward him: she may, for example, vow to speak up for herself the next time she is unfairly
accused; she may even decide to quit her job.
Aristotle realized that emotions are communal in the sense that they are usually
excited by our relations with other people. We do not become angry in some general or
vague way; ordinarily we are angry at someone else. We do not feel love toward nothing; we
feel love for some persons or creatures. We can also communicate emotions to others-people who are afraid can make others fearful as well.
Most post-classical rhetorical treatises employed the sophistic habit of treating the
emotions as suitable proofs only in the introduction and conclusion of a piece of discourse.
Cicero's De Oratore and Quintilian's Institutes are exceptions to this general rule. While
both rhetoricians adopted Aristotle's tripartite division of rhetorical proofs, neither added
much of theoretical value to his discussion of pathos. However, their treatises do supply
numerous examples of successful emotional appeals and give helpful suggestions on how to
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compose these. For these reasons, we rely on Aristotle for the theoretical part of our
discussion of the emotions, and turn to Cicero and Quintilian for advice on how to compose
emotional appeals.
Emotions as Rhetorical Proofs
According to Aristotle, three criteria must be met if rhetors wish to understand how
emotions are aroused or quelled. First, they must understand the state of mind of people who
are angry, joyful, or indignant; second, they must know who can excite these emotions in
people; third, they must understand the reasons for which people become emotional (II 1
1378a). People do not enter the state of mind called "anger" without a reason, and they
become angry at someone, even if they don't know who the person is. If man leaves his
workplace feeling perfectly calm, this state of mind changes when he discovers in the
parking lot that someone has put a dent in his car. The reason he becomes angry is that this
situation leaves him with choices that are unpleasant: don't repair the dent, in which case it
may rust and become worse, thus lowering the car's value; do repair the dent and pay for it
out of his own pocket, since the repair will probably cost less than the deductible on his
insurance. Note that his anger is not irrational in this case; it is a perfectly reasonable
response to events.
Aristotle's first criterion is that rhetors must know the emotional states of mind of
their hearers or readers. An audience may bring a certain emotional state of mind to a
rhetorical situation, and if so, the rhetor needs to decide whether this state of mind is
conducive to their acceptance of her proposition. If it is not, she needs to change their states
of mind. Aristotle thought that emotional change came about through changes in the level of
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intensity with which emotions are felt (II ii 1377b-1378a). Emotional intensity alters in
accordance with the spatial and temporal proximity of the people or situations that arouse
them. When the person with whom someone becomes angry is close, either physically or
relationally, anger will be felt more intensely. If the person who dented the car is still in the
lot when its owner arrives there, the owner focuses his anger more intensely on the culprit
than if he can only be diffusely angry in general with people who dent parked cars and run.
(In this case he may even refocus his anger on another car or on the traffic as he drives
home). If the culprit happens to be someone known to the owner of the dented car, the
owner’s emotional response will be intensified, as well, and the quality of their relationship
may evoke other emotions in addition to anger. If the two are co-workers who don't like
each other very much, the owner of the dented car may be more intensely angry than if the
culprit is a friend. Their relationship may deteriorate even more. If the culprit is a
supervisor, however, the owner of the dented vehicle may try to temper his anger with
mildness. If the two are spouses or partners, however, things become enormously complex
emotionally.
As this example demonstrates, the relation of spatial proximity to emotional intensity
depends upon social hierarchy, as well. As Aristotle noted, "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" (1378b). According to Aristotle's reasoning, people
are less prone to be angry with those above or equal to them on a scale of social authority,
while they are more prone to be angry with those below them on that scale. According to
this analysis, then, if the supervisor who dented the car is a shop foreman, the car’s owner
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may be more angry than he would be if the culprit were the president of the company.
Some emotions are also more intensely felt if people nearby are experiencing them as
well. This feature of emotional intensity is what makes horror fiction and films work
because the audience fears for the characters. The feeling of fear is intensified in a theater
because others are sharing it. Joy and anxiety appear to be shareable emotions, and mob
violence can be stimulated by shared hatred and/or rage. Entire communities can feel hope,
as when it seems likely that a war is about to end. They can also feel despair, as Americans
did during the Great Depression, or, they can share a sense of horror, as they did during and
after the events of 9/11.
The intensity with which emotions are felt depends on the nearness of their objects in
time, as well. Love tends to grow with time, but so can hatred. The intensity with which
people feel joy depends very much on the temporal proximity of a joyful event, while
sadness seems to linger through time. The intensity of grief fades, but it nearly entirely
disappears. Anger tends to fade with time, unless the object of that anger is nearby in either
time or space. The car owner’s anger toward the person who dented his car will lessen over
time, unless for some reason he fails to get the dent fixed. In that case, every time he sees it
he may get angry all over again.
Proximity also influences the intensity with which fear is felt. Because people fear
far-off dangers less than those which are closer in time and space, climate change may not
intensely frighten people now because its visible effects on human culture will not occur for
many years. And because proximity is related to emotional intensity, during wartime or
when relations between nations are tense, governments try to stimulate fear of the enemy by
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bringing their images close to the people, altering them into objects of fear and thus
disguising the fact of their spatial and temporal distance. In 2008 and 2009 when relations
between North Korea and the United States were very tense over North Korea’s nuclear
program, American media portrayed the Iranian leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, as a crazed
lover of violence. We can probably safely assume that U.S. presidents George W. Bush and
later Barack Obama were not presented in the most positive light in North Korea. In other
words, both parties to the conflict tried to personalize it for their citizens, because it is easier
to make people afraid and angry toward a person than it is to make them afraid and angry
toward an abstraction.
This strategy of depicting leaders in a frightening way is not limited to other
countries, of course. During and after the 2008 presidential election, some people opposed to
electing Obama began carrying signs depicting Obama as Hitler. Most of these signs were
carried by members of the newly established “Tea Party,” a very conservative political
group. The signs redesigned a familiar image from Obama’s campaign using starker colors
and giving him a small Hitlerean moustache. This practice is not new, of course; George W.
Bush was also depicted as Hitler by certain groups. Such depictions attempt to arouse fear of
the President among Americans by identifying him with a man who is widely regarded as the
epitome of evil. At Jon Stewart’s 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity, however, several participants
carried signs that respond directly to such depictions. Here is one of those signs:
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On The Daily Show, Stewart himself added to the commentary on Tea Party signs, subtly
pointing out that disagreement is not the same thing as mass murder.
[permission note: the first image is a photograph taken by Pamela J. Morris. She has already
preliminarily granted permission to use the photograph, and I am including her contact image
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below. Please use the email address to contact her. The second image is I’m sure property
of the Daily Show. I would really love to use this one and hope they don’t charge too much.
PLEASE let us know if they want too much money; I’m pretty sure I can find another image
of this sign.
Pamela J. Morris, Ph.D.
Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences
University of South Carolina
Baruch Marine Field Lab
PO Box 1630
Georgetown, SC 29442
Cell no.: 843.991.8355
pjmorris@belle.baruch.sc.edu]
These textual/visual conversations show how pathos and logos are frequently wrapped
together. The depiction of Obama with a tiny moustache is an enthymeme whose premises
forward rather muddled equations between socialism and Nazism, but whose conclusion
(Obama is like Hitler) is a straightforward appeal to fear. The “Sanity” signs appeal to reason
as well—the first is an enthymeme arguing that Obama (or really anyone) can’t be Hitler
because there was only one Hitler. The second one makes a more general case against the
practice of portraying anyone who holds a different view as a fascist, murderous, dictator. To
do so, this sign combines ethos, logos, and pathos: the first assertion, “I disagree with you,”
shows the sign-bearer as as someone who can think for himself. The net effect of the sign
portrays a reasonable ethos by distinguishing between the act of disagreement and the
murderous acts of Hitler. The approach of these signs, along with their context (Stewart’s
Rally) is layered with wry humor. The understated stance—e.g., “I am pretty sure you’re not
Hitler”—exposes the absurdity of depicting an opponent as Hitler. With such humor, these
responses contain strong pathos appeals as well. The “Sanity” signs meet one pathos (appeal
to fear) with another (appeal to humor). .
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The Characters of Audiences and Rhetors
In the Phaedrus, Plato instructed rhetors who wished to be persuasive to study the
people in their audiences:
Since the function of oratory is in fact to influence men’s souls, the
intending orator must know what types of soul there are. Now these are of a
determinate number, and their variety results in a variety of individuals. To
the types of soul thus discriminated there corresponds a determinate number
of types of discourse. Hence a certain type of hearer will be easy to persuade
by a certain type of speech to take such and such action for such and such
reason, while another type will be hard to persuade (271d).
He might have meant that rhetors should study the emotions of their potential hearers or
readers. In any case some authorities think that Aristotle followed Plato's advice in Book II,
chapters 12-17 of the Rhetoric, where he developed some general guidelines for evaluating
the emotional states of audiences. He listed many Greek commonplaces about the differing
attitudes held by young, middle-aged, and old people. For example, young persons are more
passionate than older people, Aristotle wrote, but their emotions pass quickly. Older people,
on the other hand, tend to be suspicious because their hopes have often been dashed. He also
provided commonplaces about the differing attitudes of rich and poor, powerful and
powerless, and those who have good or bad luck.
In Cicero’s De Oratore, one of the dialogue participants argues that it is desirable for
an audience to "carry within them . . . some mental emotion that is in harmony with what the
advocate's interest will suggest. For, as the saying goes, it is easier to spur the willing horse
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than to start the lazy one" (XLIV 185-86). He continued:
This indeed is the reason why, when setting about a hazardous and important
case, in order to explore the feelings of the tribunal, I engage wholeheartedly
in a consideration so careful, that I scent out with all possible keenness their
thoughts, judgments, anticipations and wishes, and the direction in which they
seem likely to be led away most easily by eloquence. . . . If . . . an arbitrator is
neutral and free from predisposition, my task is harder, since everything has to
be called forth by my speech, with no help from the listener's character. (187)
In this passage Cicero anticipated the findings of contemporary research about audiences.
Roughly speaking, members of an audience may hold one of three attitudes toward an issue
or a rhetor's ethos: they may be hostile, indifferent, or accepting. Communication
researchers have found that it is easier to move people who care about an issue than it is to
influence those who are indifferent. That is, it is easier to bring about a change of mind in
those who are accepting or hostile than in those who are indifferent.
Take the issue of gun control, for example. This issue directly concerns gun owners
and those who trade in guns--such as owners of gun shops--as well as organized groups such
as the National Rifle Association. It also concerns anyone who worries about their personal
safety or that of others, but people in this second group are less likely to pay attention to gun
control legislation than those who are more directly involved with the circulation of guns.
Such people will move away from indifference, of course, if a family member or friend or
some well-known person has been threatened with a gun or injured by a gunshot. People
who use guns or rely on them for a livelihood are likely to be emotionally committed during
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discussions of gun control legislation, no matter whether they oppose or favor it. People
in the second group, whose lives or work are not tied to gun use, are likely to be indifferent
to discussions of this issue. They will be more difficult to persuade in any direction, because
they first have to be shown compelling reasons why they should care about the issue at all.
Researchers have also discovered that a person's willingness to change her mind
depends on two things: the emotional intensity with which she clings to an opinion and the
degree to which her identity--her sense of herself--is wrapped up with that opinion. People
who are intensely invested in a position are less likely to change their minds than those who
are not.
Someone who favors gun control, for example, might do so for intellectual reasons:
perhaps he worries that if guns are freely available, irresponsible people will be able to
purchase them. On the other hand, if he has been held up at gunpoint, he may oppose gun
control because he wishes to carry arms himself in order to protect himself and his family.
His commitment to the free circulation of guns centers on a basic desire to survive any future
encounters of the kind. Theoretically, this person would be more difficult to move away
from his position than is someone whose commitment to gun control is only intellectual.
And if his identity and/or his fortunes depend on the free circulation of guns, he will not be at
all receptive to arguments supporting gun control. As we pointed out in the chapter on
ideology, he may share an entire set of beliefs—an ideology--about guns with members of
his community, and in this case he will be very difficult to move away from any position he
holds about them.
In sum, rhetors need to assess the emotional states of their audiences as well as the
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intensity with which they adhere to those states. Rhetors need to decide as well whether
those emotional states render their audiences receptive to themselves and/or their proposition.
Next, they should decide whether or not an audience can be persuaded to change their minds,
and, if so, whether they will be moved by appeals to their current emotional states or to a
different one induced by a rhetor. If the answer to that last question appears to be “yes,” then
the rhetor needs to decide on the appropriate level of intensity her emotional appeal might
take.
And if the rhetor is going to deliver a speech, and the emotional intensity needs to be
high, then she probably ought to seem a little emotional herself. Recall Aristotle’s picture of
the rhetorical situation as ethos meeting (and creating) pathos, layers of dispositions. If a
rhetor wants to evoke an emotion, it is best to display that emotion as well. As Quintilian
wrote,
The heart of the matter as regards arousing emotions, so far as I can see, lies
in being moved by them oneself. The mere imitation of grief or anger or
indignation may in fact sometimes be ridiculous, if we fail to adapt our
feelings to the emotion as well as our words and our face . . . Consequently,
where we wish to give an impression of reality, let us assimilate ourselves to
the emotions of those who really suffer; let our speech spring from the very
attitude that we want to produce in the judge. Will the hearer feel sorrow
when I, whose object in speaking is to make him feel it, feel none? Will he be
angry, if the person who is trying to excite his anger suffers nothing
resembling the emotions he is calling for? Will he weep when the speaker’s
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eyes are dry? Impossible! (VI ii 30)
Quintilian’s impassioned observations about passion still hold true to some degree today. In
the weeks following the 2010 explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in
the Gulf of Mexico, which ultimately resulted in more than two-hundred million gallons of
oil spilling into the ocean, U.S. citizens looked to President Barack Obama for a stern and
passionate response. Newswriters and other pundits believed that President Obama should
have exhibited more anger toward BP, and that he should have taken swifter, stronger
actions, making an example out of the corporation. One writer, New York Times columnist
Maureen Dowd, characterized one press-conference exchange this way:
Reporters grilled Robert Gibbs at his White House briefing on Tuesday about the
president’s strange inability to convey passion over a historical environmental
disaster. This was underscored by Obama’s perfunctory drop-by to a sanitized beach
in Grand Isle, La. Despite his recent ode about growing up near an ocean, he didn’t
bother to meet with the regular folks who have lost their seafaring livelihoods.
After Gibbs asserted that his boss was “enraged” at BP, CBS News’s Chip Reid
skeptically pressed: “Have we really seen rage from the president on this? I think
most people would say no.”
“I’ve seen rage from him, Chip,” Gibbs insisted. “I have.”
Reid asked for an exact definition of what constitutes emotion for Obama: “Can you
describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?”
Gibbs mentioned the words “clenched jaw” and the president’s admonition to “plug
the damn hole.”
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Such speculations about Obama’s emotional response pressed upon the rhetorical
situation of a televised speech he later delivered on the matter. Here are three excerpts from
the text of the speech. You may find the full text as well as a video at americanrhetoric.com.
OVAL OFFICE ADDRESS TO THE NATION ON BP OIL SPILL DISASTER
Excerpt 1. Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has
ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does
its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have
spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be
fighting for months and even years.
But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long
as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we
will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this
tragedy.
Excerpt 2. You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home
have made their living from the water. That living is now in jeopardy. I’ve talked to
shrimpers and fishermen who don’t know how they’re going to support their families
this year. I’ve seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers -- even in
areas where the beaches are not yet affected. I’ve talked to owners of shops and
hotels who wonder when the tourists might start coming back. The sadness and the
anger they feel is not just about the money they’ve lost. It’s about a wrenching
anxiety that their way of life may be lost.
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Excerpt 3. We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding
on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a
clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a
national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own
destiny.
These three excerpts mark moments in the speech during which pathos is at the fore; excerpt
1 conveys anger; excerpt 2 sadness; excerpt 3 evokes hope and inspiration. The first excerpt
follows a careful and matter-of-fact explanation of the situation in the Gulf, an explanation
replete with logic and historical facts. After comparing the spill to an epidemic for its longterm and dire consequences, Obama pointedly begins a pathos appeal with brief transition:
“But make no mistake.” At this point in the speech, the rhetorical style becomes a bit more
elevated; each of the three sentences in that paragraph begins with the word “We will,” and
they are delivered more slowly than the previous description, with conviction and emphatic
gestures, conveying his anger over the situation. If you watch the video of the speech, you
will notice that with the words “we will make BP pay,” Obama points his finger at an angle
between the camera and his desk. The pointing is emphatic but is not directed at the
camera—the viewers—who are largely not culpable.
Excerpt 2 appeals to emotion by detailing the hardships of the shrimpers and
fishermen in the area, those who “have made their living from the water.” Obama describes
this rather poetically, thereby heightening the appeal to pathos. The images of empty docks
and tourist areas serve to evoke empathy for those whose livelihoods are in jeopardy, and
they invoke fear for the local economies as well. Finally, excerpt 2 mentions sadness and
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anger by name and conveys the overall sentiment in the Gulf as a kind of “wrenching
anxiety.” The cadence can’t be captured by an excerpt, but it is worth noting that Obama’s
cadence during these lines matches their gravity: he pauses noticeably between the words
“sadness” and “anger.”
Excerpt 3 returns to the resolute tone of excerpt 1, this time expressing conviction
without anger. Words like “children” and “future” in the first sentence convey urgency;
“tragedy,” “painful,” and “powerful” in the second heighten intensity, and “embark” and
“unleash” in the third convey movement. The repetition of the word “now” at the end of
sentence two and the beginning of sentence three work to galvanize the audience as Obama
then goes on in subsequent paragraphs to lay out a plan for scaling back U.S. reliance on
fossil fuels.
Comparison of the written text to the video of the speech can raise interesting points
about the available means of appealing to pathos in writing and speaking situations. In live or
video recorded speaking situations, gestures and facial expressions can appeal to pathos, and
in live, video recorded, or sound recorded arguments (e.g., a podcast), speed and cadence can
also do so.
Obama’s emotional expressions are more staid than Quintilian might have advised in
his time, but it is important to remember that the close-up venue of television, which can
capture the set of a jaw, places very different demands on a rhetor than the microphone-free
delivery of Roman orators during Quintilian’s time. We will discuss the physical and visual
components of emotion in the chapter on delivery; for now, suffice it to say that pathos and
delivery work hand in hand. The next section discusses appeals to pathos in written
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discourse. These are strategies that will likely work in composing a speech as well,
especially when combined with advice in our chapter on delivery.
Composing Passionate Proofs
We noted earlier that ancient rhetoricians named many emotions to which rhetors can
appeal: anger, love, hate, fear, shame, compassion, pity, indignation, envy, joy, and hope.
We cannot predict which of these emotions will be operative in the rhetorical situations with
which our readers are working, and so we cannot forecast ways in which you can arouse
these emotions, or calm them if they are already present in members of your audience. We
can give some general advice about when and how to use emotional proofs, however.
Suppose that a rhetor who opposes the war in Afghanistan wishes to compose some
suitable emotional appeals to use in her argument. She first needs to consider whether or not
her audience will have an emotional response to this issue. Intense emotional responses are
most likely if members of her audience are personally involved in the war—if they or family
members are among the military personnel serving in Afghanistan, for instance. A strong
emotional response is also likely if any members of the audience identify closely with the
military because of a family history of honorable service, or with the values the war is said to
represent—America’s safety from terrorism, for instance. If members of the audience feel
strongly about the conflict in Afghanistan, whether they agree with the rhetor’s position or
not, they will be interested in her argument.
People who are intensely supportive of a war, as well as those who intensely oppose
it, probably take those positions because for some reason their identities and belief systems
are closely wrapped up with their hawkish or dovish positions. If this is the case, emotions
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will run high when the issue is discussed. Such people are likely to read any departure
from their preferred position as a challenge to their identities and beliefs, and this is why
argument so often devolves away from rhetoric and into angry confrontation. Intense
emotional attachment to claims can present serious barriers to rhetors who disagree with such
claims. But ancient rhetoricians thought there were ways around and through such situations,
and they provided us with a few bits of advice on how to navigate the emotional waters that
surround the making of claims and arguments.
Enargeia
If an audience does not care about an issue in which a rhetor is interested, she will
need to use emotional appeals to get their attention. In the case of an argument about the war
in Afghanistan, she can do this by opening their eyes to the serious consequences of war—
loss of innocent life, the physical and emotional injuries sustained by U.S. troops serving
long and repeated tours, devastation of the countryside, ruin of the economy, the hatred and
anger it creates and sustains, the seeming endlessness of a decade-long conflict. Ancient
rhetoricians recommended that the most effective emotional appeals actually make an issue
come alive for audiences, make them see vividly what is at stake in the issue. That is,
emotional appeals can supply audiences with a reason for identifying with an issue, thus
moving them away from indifference toward either acceptance or rejection of a position on
it.
In De Oratore Cicero's characters argued that emotional appeals are equal in
importance to arguments from character (ethos) and from the issue itself (logos) (II xliv
185ff). One of the characters in the dialogue, Antonius, argued further that it is important for
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a rhetor to feel the emotions he wants to arouse in his audience. He exemplified this point
by recalling his defence of Manius Aquilius, who was accused of extortion:
Here was a man whom I remembered as having been consul, commander-inchief, honored by the Senate, and mounting in procession to the Capitol; on
seeing him cast down, crippled, sorrowing and brought to the risk of all he
held dear, I was myself overcome by compassion before I tried to excite it in
others. (xlvii 195)
Cicero's rendering of this scene is so powerful that it still evokes compassion in people
reading it two thousand years later.
Cicero insisted that rhetors must somehow bring themselves to feel the emotions they
wished to arouse in their audience. Quintilian echoed this advice in his discussion of
emotional appeals, and he gave a useful hint about it. If a rhetor does not actually feel the
requisite emotions while he is composing, he can draw on humans' shared emotions, their
natural empathy with other human beings. Using these, he can imagine how events must
have affected those who suffered them:
I am complaining that a man has been murdered. Shall I not bring before my
eyes all the circumstances which it is reasonable to imagine must have
occurred in such a connection? Shall I not see the assassin burst suddenly
from his hiding-place, the victim tremble, cry for help, beg for mercy or turn
to run? Shall I not see the fatal blow delivered and the stricken body fall?
Will not the blood, the deathly pallor, the groan of agony, the death-rattle, be
indelibly impressed upon my mind? (VI ii 31)
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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. Vivid
depictions of events, Quintilian argued, stir the emotions of an audience exactly as if they
had been present when it occurred.
Newswriter Scott Maxwell uses enargeia when he describes a happy scene turned
tragic:
DRIVING ON DAYTONA BEACH: PARK THIS ‘TRADITION’
Four-year-old Ellie Louise Bland was doing what most any little girl would do
during a glorious day at Daytona Beach this past Saturday — dashing here and there,
playing with her family and soaking in the sunshine and salt air.
It should have been a day for making memories — the kind that inspire crayon
drawings and "Guess what I did!" exclamations when the vacation's over.
Except there was nothing inspirational about Ellie's beach day. For it was her
last.
A car stuck the preschooler and killed her.
One moment, she was holding her uncle's hand. The next, a Lincoln Town Car
driven by a 66-year-old visitor from Georgia ended her life.
Notice how the abrupt move from Maxwell’s sunny description of a day on the beach to a
grim tragedy—“for it was her last”—recreates the suddenness of the accident itself.
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Maxwell then deploys this powerful enargeia in order to convince his readers that beachdriving ought to be barred:
Ellie's family must be struggling with the kind of "Why?" questions that shake
even the most faithful.
But a question we should all be asking ourselves is: Why does Daytona still
allow cars on the beach?
The short answer is tradition — and money. It is cheaper for the city to allow
cars to drive and park where children play than provide proper parking.
But whatever the rationale, the time for this tradition has passed.
Cars and children do not mix.
Neither do trucks and sunbathers, SUVs and sea turtles, or a clear summer day
and exhaust fumes.
"I have always advocated taking cars off the beach," said Volusia County
Council member Pat Northey. "As long as we treat our beach like a roadway, we're
going to have to face the fact the people are going to get hurt."
But Northey has been outnumbered by those who believe beach-driving is as
much a part of Daytona as racing.
Council member Joshua Wagner, for instance, called Ellie's death "tragic" —
but stressed that he is still committed to letting people drive by the sea. "People just
need to understand it's a road," said the surfer and beach native. "It's just on the sand."
It sounds simple enough when Wagner says it.
Then again, he's not a preschooler.
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It's amazing what kind of adult rules and logic can flee the mind of a young
child who just discovered a hermit crab and is thrilled at the prospect of showing it
off. All of the sudden, a few posts or warning signs don't seem like much of an
impediment.
The descriptive writing at the end of the piece effectively recaptures the perspective of a
preschooler, reinforcing Maxwell’s argument that cars and trucks driving on the beach is a
problem, regardless of any longstanding traditions or economic benefits.
Maxwell’s argument is both kairotic and passionate. Such enargeia—almost painful
to consider—is appropriate in this instance because opponents of the current law have met
with little success in arguing for its repeal. His use of enargeia to argue on behalf of nonvoting toddlers, pre-schoolers, and children casts new light on the argument by invoking the
innocence of children and the tragedy of their untimely deaths. In doing so, Maxwell
attempts to galvanize the people and leaders of Daytona to finally reconsider their city’s
laws.
But there are instances where enargeia can be taken too far and can end up inhibiting
one’s argument. Signs held by animal rights activists or abortion opponents that feature
enlarged, bloody photographs can be stomach-turning for a lot of viewers and risk
forestalling deliberation. Such strategies are the visual equivalent of shouting in someone’s
face.
Honorific and Pejorative Language
Another way to evoke emotions is to use words that are honorific or pejorative.
Honorific language treats people and things respectfully, while pejorative language
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disparages and downplays them. That is, honorific and pejorative language conveys value
judgments. In the passage that follows, written by Peggy Noonan, we have bolded the words
that confer value:
Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they have to take him
more to heart, because his example here is a guide. All this seemed lost last week on
Sarah Palin, who called him, on Fox, "an actor." She was defending her form of
political celebrity—reality show, "Dancing With the Stars," etc. This is how she did
it: "Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn't he in 'Bedtime for Bonzo,' Bozo,
something? Ronald Reagan was an actor."
Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly
flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald
Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major
American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union
successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labormanagement struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by
talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and
completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated
an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern
conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure.
Then he was elected president.
The point is not "He was a great man and you are a nincompoop," though that is
true. The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all
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in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him.
He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame;
he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the
world.
Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into
politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter
public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in
and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be
able to persuade.
Americans don't want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy.
They'll vote no on that.
It's not just the message, it's the messenger.
Noonan’s portrait of Sarah Palin is as nasty as her account of Reagan is exalted. She
makes these values clear with a series of subtle linguistic jabs—you need “actual”
talent, and with the blunt transition “excuse me,” she makes no secret of the offense
she takes to the disrespect she reads in Palin’s gaffe. We have rewritten the passage
without the honorific and pejorative language so that you can see what is lost without
it:
Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they ought to think of
him as more of a guide. Last week Sarah Palin called him, on Fox, "an actor." She
was defending her form of political celebrity, her recent appearance on "Dancing
With the Stars," for example. Here is what Palin said: "Wasn't Ronald Reagan an
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actor? Wasn't he in 'Bedtime for Bonzo,' Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an
actor."
Palin’s account was unfortunate. I would like to use the incident to make a larger
point. Ronald Reagan was an actor who became president of a major American labor
union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union through
upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered
and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at
General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as
governor of California; he challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of
his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy
without the help of a conservative infrastructure. He was later elected president.
The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in
politics. He brought his self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when
he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was
already well known, he'd accomplished a number of things.
People should have to earn their way into politics. They should go have a life, build
up their accomplishments, then enter public service. To do so requires talent: one
needs to be able to bring people in and along. One needs to be able to persuade.
Americans don't want, as their representatives, inexperienced, unpredictable people.
They'll vote no on that.
It's not just the message, it's the messenger.
Without the honorific and pejorative language, much of the emotional appeal of the original
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passage dissipates. The author’s ethos changes as well, becoming more distant and
formal. The revision is also far less interesting than the original, which suggests that
pejorative terms are colorful, emphatic, and hence persuasive.
We encourage our readers to use these strategies to insert pathetic appeals into their
own speaking and writing. Try adding honorific or pejorative language into a description of
an issue, or try composing an enargeia to gain your readers’ or listeners’ attention and to
create a compelling scene for your argument. We think that if you compose these appeals
carefully, with an eye toward the rhetorical situations you face, you will find that listeners
and readers may respond to your propositions and arguments more warmly than they might
have without your use of these appeals.
Rhetorical Activities
1. Try creating an emotional appeal to use in an argument you are working on. If
you are not working in a specific rhetorical situation at the moment, invent one. That is,
describe an audience and an issue. Now decide what the emotional state of your designated
audience is likely to be. Decide what emotions would rouse them to action, or at least move
them to change their minds. Create an appeal to that emotion. Now create an enargeia, a
vivid scene, that is calculated to rouse the requisite emotions.
2. Select a proposition from your own repertoire of beliefs--that is, from your
ideology. For example, perhaps you believe that the United States ought to intervene the
affairs of other countries for humanitarian reasons. Perhaps you support the legal status of
abortion, or perhaps you oppose the death penalty. Now imagine an audience of one or more
persons who are either hostile or indifferent to your proposition. Write a description of a
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rhetorical situation in which you attempt to persuade this audience to accept your
proposition. Try to figure out why your audience is hostile or indifferent to you or to your
proposition. Compose a list of their possible emotional responses either to the issue or to
your situated ethos. List some pathetic proofs you might use to persuade its members to
accept your premise, or at least to examine it.
3. Think of a rhetorical situation in which an appeal to anger is appropriate.
Compose the appeal. Now try composing appeals to other emotions discussed in this
chapter. In what context would an appeal to shame be effective? Compassion?
Hopelessness?
4. Advertisers often rely on fear--particularly the fear of losing status in the
community--to get people to buy things. Find some examples of ads that do this. Do
advertisers exploit other emotional appeals such as anger or dread or love or hope?
5. Are Aristotle and Cicero’s lists of emotions complete? That is, can you think of
other emotions that are used in contemporary emotional appeals? For example, desire is
often appealed to in contemporary rhetoric. Politicians say that “The American people want”
this or that, and advertisers create extremely subtle appeals to desire, especially erotic desire.
Perfume is a good example here—perfumes are often advertised with nothing but a
photograph of a handsome actor’s face and a bottle of perfume. Are such ads effective?
Why or why not? Can you think of other examples? Is desire an emotion?
5. Keep a list of the honorific and pejorative terms that you come across in your
reading. Once it has become long enough (fifty examples each of honorific and pejorative
terms should do), study the list to determine whether or not they tell you something about
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community values.
List of Works Cited
Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 2004.
Damasio, Anthony. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York:
Harper Collins 1994.
Dowd, Maureen. “A Storyteller Loses the Story Line.” The New York Times. June 1, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02dowd.html. Online.
Feller, Ben. “White House Hits Back at Carter Remarks.” Yahoo News, 20 May 2007.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070520/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_carter. Accessed
05/23/07.
Maxwell, Scott. “Driving on Daytona Beach: Park this ‘Tradition.’” Orlando Sentinel March
23, 2010, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-03-23/news/os-scott-maxwellbeach-drive-032310-20100322_1_ellie-cars-drive-and-park. Online
Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1994.
Noonan, Peggy. “Americans Vote for Maturity.” Wall Street Journal November 5, 2010.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805704575594772776292394.ht
ml. Online.
Obama, Barack. “Oval Office Address to the Nation on BP Oil Spill.” Delivered June 15,
2010.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamabpoilspilloval
office.htm. Online.
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Prendergast, Catherine. Buying into English. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh Press, 2008.
Rich, Frank. “The Clear Blue Sky.” Review of Falling Man by Don DeLillo. New York
Times. May 27, 2007: section 7, p. 1; 8-9. Print.
Scraton, Phil. “Introduction: Witnessing ‘Terror,” Anticipating ‘War’.” In Beyond
September 11: An Anthology of Dissent. Ed. Phil Scraton. 1-10. London: Pluto
Press, 2002.
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