"Those children-seeking missiles were diabolical." Bill Clinton carried this to comic lengths when, in his first State of the Union address, he noted that 'not a single Russian missile is pointed at the children of America.' "It has become a verbal tic for politicians to say that everything they do is 'about the children.' This rhetoric of pathos reflects the de-intellectualization of public life-the substitution of sentimentalism for reasoned persuasion. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed. It is not so with appeals to the understanding." As soon as we appraise an audience of such an intention, we jeopardize, if we do not entirely destroy, the effectiveness of the emotional appeal. "t is perilous to announce to an audience that we are going to play on the emotions. (Augustine of Hippo, Book Four of On Christian Doctrine, 426) And just as he is delighted if you speak sweetly, so is he persuaded if he loves what you promise, fears what you threaten, hates what you condemn, embraces what you commend, sorrows at what you maintain to be sorrowful rejoices when you announce something delightful, takes pity on those whom you place before him in speaking as being pitiful, flees those whom you, moving fear, warn are to be avoided and is moved by whatever else may be done through grand eloquence toward moving the minds of listeners, not that they may know what is to be done, but that they may do what they already know should be done." "Just as the listener is to be delighted if he is to be retained as a listener, so also he is to be persuaded if he is to be moved to act. here force has to be brought to bear on the judges' feelings and their minds distracted from the truth, there the orator's true work begins." Yet this is what dominates the courts, this is the eloquence that reigns supreme. "he man who can carry the judge with him, and put him in whatever frame of mind he wishes, whose words move men to tears or anger, has always been a rare creature. If the orator lacks that ability, he lacks the one thing most essential." "veryone must acknowledge that of all the resources of an orator far the greatest is his ability to inflame the minds of his hearers and to turn them in whatever direction the case demands.
Coutant, "Do the Right Thing." Renewing Rhetoric's Relation to Composition, ed. The pathos exists in the emotional appeals to the receiver's sense of compassion (for the dying animal species, deforestation, the shrinking of glaciers, and so on)." "Most twenty-first-century direct mail solicitations for environmental groups invoke the pathetic appeal.Greene, "Pathos." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Images are particularly effective in arousing emotions, whether those images are visual and direct as sensations, or cognitive and indirect as memory or imagination, and part of a rhetor's task is to associate the subject with such images." Emotions range from mild to intense some, such as well-being, are gentle attitudes and outlooks, while others, such as sudden fury, are so intense that they overwhelm rational thought. "Of the three appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos, it is the that impels an audience to act.
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