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Pathos is an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric (where it is considered one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside ethos and logos), and in literature, film, and other narrative art.
Emotional appeals can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:
Appealing to the empathy and sensitivity of the audience is broadly termed an emotional appeal. Emotional appeals can be a powerful rhetorical element of a persuasive speech. They are an attempt to make the audience feel something, and in the process, be persuaded by the speech. A crowd that is feeling something is much more likely to be engaged, give consideration to your arguments, and remember the speech.
Emotional appeals can manifest in a number of ways. Metaphors, stories, and passionate delivery are all emotional appeals because their effectiveness lies not only in the words but in the emotions they evoke in the audience.
Appeals to empathy and sensitivity can create a sense of connection and trust between you and the audience. Since trust and connection are vital elements of being able to persuade an audience, emotional appeals can be incredibly useful.
An emotional appeal is directed to sway an audience member's emotions and uses the manipulation of the recipient's emotions rather than valid logic to win an argument.
An emotional appeal uses emotions as the basis of an argument's position without factual evidence that logically supports the major ideas endorsed by the presenter. In an emotional appeal, persuasive language is used to develop the foundation of an appeal to emotion-based arguments instead of facts. Therefore, the validity of the premises that establish such an argument does not prove to be verifiable.
Emotional appeal is a logical fallacy whereby a debater attempts to win an argument by trying to get an emotional reaction from the opponent and audience. It is generally characterized by the use of loaded language and concepts (God, country, and apple pie being good concepts; drugs and crime being bad ones).
In debating terms, emotional appeals are often effective as a rhetorical device but are generally considered naive or dishonest as a logical argument since they often appeal to the prejudices of listeners rather than offer a sober assessment of a situation.
Emotional appeals can also backfire if misused. If taken too far, an appeal to emotion can seem to be forced. Audiences can tell the difference between an honest emotional appeal and an attempt to manipulate how they feel. Audiences loathe feeling manipulated, so an audience that senses inauthentic motives will strongly reject both the appeal and the speaker.
When the emotional appeal is both authentic and appropriately used, you can develop a much stronger connection to your audience than by using logic alone. However, to misuse an emotional appeal is to completely alienate your audience and even foster negative feelings.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of an emotional appeal is determined only by the audience. If the audience does not feel the intended emotions, by definition, the appeal has failed.
Children are more often than not toddled out as an appeal to emotion. From pictures of starving children to motivate people to give to charity to using them as an excuse to ban things that children shouldn't even be aware of (e.g., guns), they are repeatedly paraded in front of audiences to appeal to their emotional protective instincts, often overriding anyone's sense of rationality.
For example, "for the children" or "think of the children" as emotional appeals have been used with success in passing political motions such as Proposition Hate in California.
As with children, cute animals override most people's logic. Even if the pictures of animal testing put out by PETA are 50 years out of date, they still provoke an emotional response rather than a reasoned one when trying to assess cruelty in animal testing.
Producing an emotional appeal requires an understanding of your audience and what may strike their emotions the most.
EXAMPLE
If you are giving a speech at an event to raise money for a children's hospital, it would be appropriate to use an appeal to emotions relating to children. For instance, the speaker could use an emotionally charged anecdote about a child who was sick and subsequently cured at this hospital. This story stresses the value that the hospital had on improving the child's health.In general, an effective way to create an emotional appeal is to use words that have a lot of pathos associated with them. Pathos is an emotional appeal used in rhetoric that depicts certain emotional states.
Some examples of pathos-charged words include: strong, powerful, tragic, equality, freedom, and liberty. These words can be used in a speech to intensify an emotional appeal to an audience.
An example of a speech that is particularly effective at producing an emotional response with its listeners is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
The speech uses rhetoric to convey the point of equal opportunity for all people. It is considered by many as a prime example of successful rhetoric and emotional appeal.
In the speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. weaves current events into the fabric of American history, underscoring the tragedy with biblical rhetoric. King hinges his call for change on three refrains or repeated phrases. He frames his vision for the future with the famous phrase, "I have a dream."
As his speech draws to a close, he wills his vision to become a reality across the country, moving on to the refrain, "Let freedom ring!" He closes his speech with the repeated line, "Free at last!" King articulates cruel injustices, leads us to imagine a world without those injustices, and then appeals to his audience's emotions through these phrases and the idea of a world with equal opportunity.
Here is an excerpt from a transcript of the famous speech. You can read the entire transcript here.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.
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