The Hidden Sentiments.
Feelings, not analytical thinking, drive donations (Wharton 2007).
a) Any money that you donate will go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl who lives in Mali in Africa. Rokia is desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger, even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia’s family and other members of the community to help feed and educate her, and provide her with basic medical care.
b) Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children. In Zambia, severe rainfall deficits have resulted in a 42% drop in maize production from 2000. As a result, an estimated three million Zambians face hunger. Four million Angolans — one-third of the population — have been forced to flee their homes. More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance.
In 2000, while Africa was going through the major food crisis. Various fundraising campaigns were conducted. Two of the given stories were used to collect funds for the cause. It was found that the average amount collected by using the narrative of personal story was $ 3.7per person whereas using the numbers while designing campaigns, the amount collected was $ 2.5per person. The researchers found that if organizations want to raise money for a charitable cause, it is far better to appeal to the heart than to the head.
The incident clearly defines the presence of emotions and connection with the personal stories. Thus the use of narrative plays the dominating role, the rhetoric we use helps us in persuading the audience.
What is a Rhetoric? The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. The rhetorical device i.e. Ethos , Pathos and/or Logos are used as a medium.
“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives, and we obey them without realizing it.” – Vincent Van Gogh
Pathos
Pathos evokes an emotional response from a reader by appealing to empathy, fear, humor, or some other emotion. It works in conjunction with logos (logic) and ethos (credibility) to help form a solid argument. However, not every argument employs all three rhetorical devices. Each writer must choose which combination of rhetorical devices will work well for his or her writing and will suit the chosen topic. Used correctly, pathos can make a bland argument come alive for the audience. Pathos offers a way for the audience to relate to the subject through commonly held emotions. However, it is important to determine when pathos will be useful and when it will only serve to muddy the argumentative waters. Here are few examples of pathos used in different forms (Gayle):
- Quotations: Picking out famous quotes adds an emotion to the writing, it connects the reader to the writing and is an eye catcher. For example while writing about freedom fighters using the quote “Inquilab Zindabad”.
- Anecdotes : An anecdote in a writing is a way to connect emotionally to the readers. For example while writing about human trafficking, a start with a personal story of one person will attract the reader.
“Mari Had 4 Children Over Her 16 Years Of Forced Prostitution. ”
3. Humor: Including humor in the writing indirectly creates an emotional appeal. For example comedians use lot of humor in their writings to capture reader’s eyes.
4. Media Forms: Usage of visuals, audio, images and other media forms is one another way to engage reader’s emotions. For example, while writing about terrorists attack, adding pictures of victims create anger among the readers.
We learnt that pathos is found almost in every form, let’s look at another story.
He is our savior, don’t know why?
Because he has helped us, by convincing the professor to extend the deadline. Do you know what has he written? Would professor give the permission if he doesn’t give a good reason? How has he assured that he touch his professor’s heart?
You want to see how? Here is the magic…(Salik, Class Mail 2018)
Dear Santa,
Since Christmas is right around the corner, we thought it’d be a good time to share with you our wish list. Don’t fret, our list isn’t incredibly long — it has a total of one item on it! I’m sure that you can conjure up our gift in a jiffy :D
We’ve been trying our best to be good kids for the past few months. While there have been times we’ve wavered and faltered, we’ve, for the most part, been honest, diligent, and good-natured. So, considering our dedication to doing good, we’d love it if you could gift us an extension on our submission. We would’ve never asked for an extension, but the intensity and demanding nature of Heart of Leadership has caught us by surprise :(
Please consider our request. We’ll be the happiest kids ever on Christmas if you do grant us the extension :D :’D
Thank you very very much for listening to us!
*crossing fingers and hoping plea gets accepted*
Yours lovingly,
Your critical writing fellows
P.S. We promise cookies and milk when we next see you.
“Santa”, thats what he has used to address his professor. The idea of Christmas gift has created a positive vibe. Now by telling the professor about how good and honest we have been in the last few months, he can consider to help us and surprise us by extending the deadline.
Emotions
Feeling, Sentiments, Sensation. Emotion is a mental state associated with thoughts and feelings (Emotion 2019). We unconsciously tend to express ourselves in different ways and we include our emotions in our rhetorics. It comes in both ways , the sentence we use and the way we speak. So what are the different kind of emotions?
Here are few examples:
Fear : Any delays beyond the given time will result in an automatic grade cut, irrespective of the reasons.
Anger : I never expected this from you, you ditched me over him.
Guilt : I am sorry, I was not able to join you for the meeting. I fell sick terribly.
Pride : I knew I will win this race, I know how good runner I am.
Emotions have no limit to it, we use them everywhere. Sometimes we do that consciously and sometimes unconsciously. We should know the importance of emotions, if not used properly or at the right moment. It can effect us badly. Let’s look at this incident:
Aditi was smart, driven, and a great professional women who had an amazing track record. She was giving her interviews and during one interview, she had impressed her supervisors by her passion, drive, and creative ideas. They recruited her to implement rigorous audit processes. Just a few weeks after joining, Aditi drew from her previous experience and generated many new and creative ideas to overhaul the financial audit processes. Her supervisors had given her all the responsibility and authority to bring about the important changes. Though, she quickly encountered a problem and came up with solutions but her peers and team members would not buy into her ideas.
What was missing there? Even after coming up with solutions, why had Aditi failed? She had failed to include emotions and never took the time and effort to involve her peers and team members in the decision-making and convince them of the need for change.
Thus it is important to know that, in order to persuade others to your point of view, you must understand what truly moves your audience and then appeal through the elements.
Advertisements
In today’s life, the world is driven by another world called as a virtual world. Advertisements play a bigger role in it. Thus, to connect to the audience (where audience is not specific and is very broadly categorized), good persuasive advertisement schemes are required. These advertisements also include the three mode of persuasion, Pathos is a critical element which captures the audience eyes. Let us look at some of the known advertisements. Emotions create responses and, in the increasingly consumer-driven culture, the response is to buy something. Pathos appeals to an audience’s basic emotions like joy, fear, and envy. All are easily triggered in many ways.
A story of a Transgender — Vicks Touch of Care
Stuck up in an arduous lifestyle of lacking human rights or even minimal social acceptance, Vicks aims to redefine the meaning of family in a contemporary society with #TouchOfCare, a campaign that embraces maternity with a slight variation but the same affection.
Vicks Touch of care, the slogan itself has made an emotional appeal to the audience and adding a real story would instantly capture their eyes.
Fallacious Pathos
Emotions used in any form of rhetoric in order to sway the opinions of the audience without any purpose and logic leads to the fallacious pathos. Some of the ways to identify them are:
Argument by Emotive Language: Using emotional words that are not supported by evidence and/or are unconnected to the argument being made (Gayle).
Appeal to Pity: Drawing on irrelevant personal experiences or feelings in order to produce a sympathetic response (Gayle).
The Slippery Slope: Suggesting that a particular argument or course of action will lead to disastrous consequences without offering evidence. This fallacy usually produces an emotional response (Gayle).
Argument by Dismissal: Rejecting an idea without providing a reason or explanation for its dismissal (Gayle).
Thus, such arguments which are given above should be avoided in any form of rhetoric. The new study known as emotional intelligence has come up which devoid logical fallacy. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It focusses on self regulation, where we learn to use emotions in a right manner (Sussex). While you might be smart and have all the right skills to succeed at your job, if you lack emotional intelligence, there’s a high chance you’ll struggle to fully succeed in the workplace as is the case with your life.
Learn more by visiting:
- How to use rhetoric to get what you want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3klMM9BkW5o
- https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/pathos
Works Cited
“To Increase Charitable Donations, Appeal to the Heart — Not the Head.” Knowledge@Wharton. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 27 June, 2007. Web. 11 March, 2019 <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/to-increase-charitable-donations-appeal-to-the-heart-not-the-head/>
“Inspirational Quotations by Vincent Van Gogh (Dutch Painter).” Inspirational Quotations, www.inspiration.rightattitudes.com/authors/vincent-van-gogh/.
“Survivor Story: Four Children and a 16-Year Relationship.” Polaris, 26 Oct. 2017, polarisproject.org/blog/2015/05/03/survivor-story-four-children-and-16-year-relationship.
Gayle, Kendra. “Kendra Gayle, Jessica McKee, and Megan McIntyre.” Writing Commons, writingcommons.org/161-information-literacy/rhetorical-analysis/591-pathos.
“Emotion.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Feb. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion.
Gayle, Kendra. “Kendra Gayle, Jessica McKee, and Megan McIntyre.” Writing Commons, writingcommons.org/fallacious-pathos.
“Emotional Intelligence.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence.
