Walking Down a Treacherous Pathos

In a perfect world, the irrational has no play in argumentation. Instead, arguments should be fully evaluated upon... well the actual argument. Our world, however, is unfortunately far from perfect, and many times irrational factors come into play - specifically emotion.

The appeal to pathos is one recognized completely in modern rhetoric. It is a powerful tool of persuasion, in fact many would argue it is too powerful. As I stated earlier, an argument should be judged for what it is, its logic and credibility. Why should emotion have anything to do with this? Well for all the irrationality that emotion holds, it is actually quite rational. Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization argues that emotion is driven by a sort of instinctual and primal logic. Emotion hits hard because it has to do with topics that directly and strongly affect the audience. So when people say that emotion hurts argumentation, perhaps they are not looking closely enough.

For all the effectiveness emotion holds, it actually can be more hurtful than helpful. Pathos is in many way mitigated by logos and ethos. The three hold each other in balance. Push too hard with pathos, and you will lose credibility and validity. Argue without it, and you will have a lacking attempt at persuasion. Take, for example, The Atlantic article I mentioned in my post "Anonymity." There, commenters took highly emotional approaches, trying to win arguments even through soft threats! Sure, maybe in person a threat can be taken with some validity, but in an anonymous setting it deters the audience. Those who focus far too much on pathos become increasingly obvious in their attempt to use it as compensation for a lack of argument foundation, and lose an appeal to ethos because of it. Pathos is, without a doubt, a double-edged sword. It is not the end all, be all, and is only as effective as you make it.

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Source: In Face of Crisis, Policy Makers Should Plan, Not Panic

In this article in the NY Times there is a discussion on how policy makers should be handling the seemingly everlasting recovering of this last decades economic downturn. Here, the author portrays an idea where policy makers focus on replenishing the job market as a primary goal. This is interesting from a Keynesian perspective. By driving money into market, there can be a higher allowance for human capital. In many ways, this should cause a resurgence in the economy, building it from the ground up. My inspiration for choosing this is my interest in economics, something that ultimately stems from my family's hardships during the recession.

Anonymity

How would you talk if you knew that you were to remain a complete stranger, protected in a shroud of anonymity. Many governments boast a privilege of free speech, but it is never without restrictions. In person, the level of honesty in your words is confined by its repercussions. Will it anger those around me? Will my peers think I am weird? Will this even put me in danger? All of these questions and more are considered before concrete confrontation. These, however, cease to exist in a world of anonymity. A world called the internet.

I recently read an article in my English 109H class from The Atlantic which discussed the upcoming Republican primaries and the recent increase in favorable polling results for candidate Donald Trump. Trump, being a highly controversial pick, cause quite a stir in the comments section of the article. The most popular seemed to be almost volatile in their nature. Outright attacks, cursing out Trump and his platform with everything from uneducated slander to refined citings of political science. These commenters act out of fear. The reason why their posts are so malicious is due to them stemming from an emotional and highly insecure place. They feel the need to curse out certain ideas in a public manner as brute force attempt to sway others. And this is ultimately driven through anonymity. There is no consequence to their actions, good or bad. The commenter literally has nothing to lose. So why not speak your mind? Why not be aggressive and impolite, nobody is going to know. People can vent and even engage in infamous internet "trolling," doing whatever they please without worry. But an important point is that they are now lost in a sea of other anonymous faces. Who is going to listen to them? If I do not know who you are, I have no reason to trust you and adopt your perspective. There is an interesting trade off at play. To make an argument to the least censored extent, many require anonymity. But anonymity inherently hurts credibility. So thus begs the question: is it really favorable to be anonymous?

Tricky Situations

In my previous post, I discussed the class's introduction to rhetoric and mentioned a task we had used to aid our learning process. Having already explained its purpose, I will now further share details on the task itself.

We were presented with three rhetorical situations: job interview, date, roommate searching. The objective to point out adjectives to describe ourselves within them. The true crux was the contrast between how we would handle ourselves in each situation. The job interview was more professional, using terms like determined or loyal. The date was significantly more intimate, carrying more personal adjectives such as sweet and funny. Lastly, the roommate search held intimacy like the date, but illuminated traits that were more specific to a roommate than a lover, such as relaxed and clean. The interview appeared to be the easiest to sort, with the roommate and date situations being often confused due to their sharing of intimacy. I feel like this was especially prominent because, though a date is more intimate than a roommate search, many students were too uncomfortable to reveal more personal details of themselves and thus the depth reduced to that of the roommate.

This task was something I was very familiar with. Having taken rhetoric in seventh grade, pursued many years of english following that (including AP English), and even participated in my high schools speech and debate club, rhetorical devices were far from alien.

My diction varies throughout many of the situations I find myself in. I feel the best is when I am leaving a message on the phone, where I take a much more professional tone. Though I am usually a very laid back and simple spoken person, my word choice, sentence structure, and even voice clarity elevate. Rather than giving my characteristic "hey", I greet the automated voice with, "hello, this is Massimo Pascale." The message that follows includes a detailed explanation of my purpose as well as intelligent wording to increase credibility and provide clarity. To this extent, I am better able to demonstrate my purpose to the recipient, making to more inclined to return my call as well as even aid in my purpose. This is especially effective with work related calls, where the call's appeal to ethos usually allows me to snag clients or get job offers. Nobody acts the same way in every situation, and if they do they are not taking advantage of what the English language has gifted them with - rhetoric.

An Exercise In Scaffolding: The Early Application of a Method Continuously Proven Effective

Scaffolding is a term originally reserved only for construction, meaning the temporary wooden structure used to give workers access to higher floors when building. In education, the word refers to a more show-and-learn type process. In this blog specifically, I will expand on its use as a tool that uses prior knowledge to illuminate new concepts.

Effective use of the English language is all around us. Specific concepts with foreign names make it seem as if only intellectuals are privy to rhetorical tools, when in reality they are as abundant as music or a simple argument between friends. That lyric where your favorite band reversed the order of the words in the preceding line? That's chiasmus. The way your buddy just used his broken wrist to convince you to hold his books? An apparently effective appeal to pathos. Do these people know that they are implementing higher level language devices with ease? Perhaps, but it is probably safe to say they do not know there is some complicated term learned in a college English course to describe it. Even the average person is, to some extent, a master of the language they speak. They have an arsenal of lingual weapons, just not the awareness to use them whenever effective - only sometimes. So when my professor stepped up to our first class of the year and made us do a seemingly simple exercise, I knew there had to be another motive.

Much of rhetoric includes understanding how different words and word combinations produce effects on people. Calling somebody fun rather than enjoyable can completely shift the assumed perspective towards the person. The group exercise I participated in class had us assigning adjectives to different people, and then later trying to guess the type of person the adjectives described. As people who have long since learned and practiced the English language, we could pluck words from our mind without being fully conscious of the effect that each word had. Once that became more obvious to us, it was simple to identify rhetoric and how we were already effective users of it. Seeing teaching like this assures me of a fortunate future in the class; this form of scaffolding has time and time again been shown to be successful, and, with yet another tally in the win column, I am sure we are about to see it many more times throughout the year.