Emotional Appeal: Pathos

Pathos, also called the pathetic or emotional appeals, persuades audiences by arousing the emotions (Lanham 74). In his Rhetoric, Aristotle argued that there are two different sources of the emotional appeals. First, the rhetor may use enargeia. The word 'enargeia' means literally "in work" — energizing or actualizing. It refers to the rhetor's goal of arousing the passions within the audience to move them to act (Corbett 319).

For example, consider the Save the Children ad here. (You may click on the ad to see it enlarged.) The ad uses a photo of a small child, so malnourished that his bones are clearly visible under his skin. He sits huddled in the open air, weak, in a fetal position. A vulture sits, waiting, in the background. The images and text in this ad are designed to have the maximum emotional effect for one thing: to motivate the reader to act — to make an act of charity.

Secondly, the rhetor may use honorific or pejorative language to generate emotional appeal (Crowley 126-7). Honorific and pejorative language together I call suasive language, language designed to sway the audience in favor of or against a subject. Honorific language heaps praise on its subject and treats the subject with respect. Pejorative language disparages the subject, ridiculing and downplaying the significance of the subject. To see and hear an example of honorific language at work, consider these ads from the MDA telethon, hosted each year by Jerry Lewis. The first photo shows Lewis with the "Goodwill Ambassador," an honorific title, elevating the subject from the language of the past, when Benjamin Cumbo would have been called the "poster child." You can listen to Lewis's appeal for a donation to the Muscular Dystrophy Association by clicking on the image of the speaker. As you listen, pay attention to Lewis's use of honorific language, such as "life saving research" and "Thank you for caring."

Enargeia and suasive language work together with ethos and logos to create a powerful, moving argument that some ancient rhetoricians described as word magic (Nash 209). But it wasn't magic that helped MDA raise a record 50.5 million dollars in 1997. It was good, solid, carefully prepared rhetoric.

Effective use of emotional appeal is also credited with saving the political career of then Senator Richard Nixon. In 1952, it was discovered that he had accepted several "gifts" from campaign contributors, gifts that he later had to return.

The scandal came at a bad time, since Nixon was chosen to be Eisenhower's Vice-Presidential running mate. Under pressure, Nixon made a public accounting of all his assets and an apology for accepting the gifts. Although the speech has several effective emotional appeals, this speech has become known as the "Checkers Speech" since he uses his child's dog, Checkers, as an opportunity to make the most memorable emotional appeal to his audience. I have excerpted the relevant paragraphs at right. You can listen to these paragraphs of Richard Nixon's "Checkers Speech" of 23 September 1952 by clicking on the image of the speaker. But be patient: it's a large file — 474K.

The most powerful example of emotional appeal I can think of occurs in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In April of 1963, a young, relatively unknown minister left his home and church in Atlanta, Georgia to help his friends and colleagues protest nonviolently against segregation and discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama. That minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested and held in jail. While in jail, several priests, rabbis, and ministers published a letter in the Birmingham newspaper, calling this young minister's actions unwise and poorly timed. Their letter suggested that King and other civil rights leaders should just wait, that the life was bound to get better for American blacks, if they just waited.

In response to that editorial, King wrote one of the greatest pieces of literature in English, his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In the following excerpt from the letter, notice King's use of suasive language, especially how he turns pejorative language to his purpose. Notice too his use of repetition in sentence structure, a rhetorical device we will study later, called parallelism.

M. L. King, Jr.     "We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, 'Wait.' But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: 'Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?'; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading 'white' and 'colored'; when your first name becomes 'nigger,' your middle name becomes 'boy' (however old you are) and your last name becomes 'John,' and your wife and mother are never given the respected title 'Mrs.'; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness'; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."

King's sparing use of pathos in this letter is the best example I can give you to illustrate the power of emotional appeal.

Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for Modern Students, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Crowley, Sharon. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan, 1994.

Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Nash, Walter. Rhetoric. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1989.

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