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last.updated 5.25.09

Pathos

Purpose

Ethos, the appeal to emotion, has been considered to be the most effective means of persuading one's audience. We will discuss the strategies that have been used to persuade with emotion in both classical and contemporary time periods. You will also have an opportunity to practice applying these principles to a text.

Discussion–How does this make you feel?

As a class, we will address the following questions...

• What questions do you have about the readings?
• What objections do you think Plato would have to a rhetor's reliance on pathos? How is this different from Aristotle? If you were to revise and update Aristotle's list of emotions, what might you add or delete from these chapters? Why?
• What is exordium? What is its rhetorical function? Put Cicero into conversation with Aristotle. Where would you see them agreeing about issues of pathos?
• What strategies does Myers argue that charity letter writers are using to make emotional appeals? How does Myers organize his article? Is this effective?

Activity–Our President's Appeals to Emotion

In pairs you will...

• read Obama's victory speech
• pay attention to the appeals to emotion that he makes, especially those that Aristotle discusses.
• collaboratively write a 500-word essay in which you use Aristotle's principles of pathos to explain what Obama is doing and why it is or is not effective. This exercise will give you the opportunity to practice working with these rhetorician's theories so that you can get feedback before you do this work on your own.
• send your response in the body of an email to the instructor.

After addressing these issues for an hour, we will reconvene as a class and discuss our conclusions.