Saturday, August 29, 2015

Logos and Pathos and their Role in Arguements

I have recently read a research brief from the National Institute for Civil Discourse titled  Classical Rhetoric, Contemporary Science and Modern Civil Discourse.  The article mentions how in certain scenarios the use of pathos in the argument overshadows the use of logos.  my view on the matter of the use of pathos is primarily based on that.
Source; https://pixabay.com/en/emoticon-tongue-emotion-expression-25518/

I am of the opinion that pathos does indeed have its place in an argument, but it should not overshadow logic and rational reasoning. A big role of pathos, in my mind, is to help relate the topic and viewpoint to the audience. A bad example of pathos is to use manipulative rhetoric to cause an emotional response. An example of this bad use of pathos can be seen in my third blog post, which contains a link to an article about violence in doom. In the article are twitter posts showing the viewpoint of individuals against the violent game. My main issue with these posts is their use of pathos. In doom the player has to kill demons, but in the posts they never tell the reader that the game is about violently killing demons. Instead they use the word bodies to intentionally mislead people in thinking that the game is about killing humans. So in short, an emotional argument that relies solely on emotional appeal is not a good argument in my opinion.

No comments:

Post a Comment