Pathos

Using Pathos in Persuasive Writing

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

Incorporating appeals to pathos into persuasive writing increases a writer’s chances of achieving his or her purpose. Read “Pathos” to define and understand pathos and methods for appealing to it. The following brief article discusses examples of these appeals in persuasive writing.

An important key to incorporating pathos into your persuasive writing effectively is appealing to your audience’s commonly held emotions. To do this, one must be able to identify common emotions, as well as understand what situations typically evoke such emotions.

Fallacious Pathos

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Jessica McKee, Megan McIntyre - University of Arkansas

Creative Challenges - appeal, appeal to pity, Argument, dismissal, emotional response, emotional words, emotive language, ethos, Evidence, explanation, fallacious, Fallacious Ethos, fallacious kairos, fallacious logos, Fallacious Pathos, kairos, logos, pathos, personal experience, pity, response, slippery slope, the slippery slope, unconnected, viewpoint

Argument by Dismissal: Rejecting an idea without providing a reason or explanation for its dismissal. For instance, there is a tendency to cry "socialism" when faced with calls for a single-payer system in the ongoing health care debate. Such a dismissal of the single-payer system may include the observations, "This is America!," or, "You are free to live elsewhere if you prefer."

Pathos

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Kendra Gayle

Creative Challenges - anecdotes, Argument, audience, connect, develop, direct quotations, effective, emotion, emotional response, emotionalism, emotionally driven, essay, ethos, humor, images, kairos, logos, media, moral, pathos, readers, relate, rhetorical device, subject, topic, writing, writing methods

"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

Remember those after-school specials that aired on TV when you were a kid? They always had some obvious moral (like "don't drink and drive"). And they were often really emotionally driven.

At the end of the show, the camera would pan out, showing the protagonist alone and suffering for the poor decisions that he or she had made.

Using Pathos in Persuasive Writing

Fallacious Pathos

Pathos

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Pathos

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