Issue Paper #5: Pathos
due october 13th

Choose a text or segment of a text that represents your candidate's rhetoric on your issue (it can be a brochure, flyer, commercial, segment of a speech, radio advertisement, etc.) Your goal for this paper is to analyze how pathos plays a persuasive part in this particular text.  Aristotle defined pathos as speech that “stirs the emotions.”  Our textbook defines pathos as “appealing to the emotions or motives of an audience.”

Pay attention to the overall purpose of your text, and explore how the author employs certain pathetic appeals so as to achieve his or her purpose.  Consider some of the strategies the book mentions, such as enargeia, honorific language, and perjorative language.

Think of the various ways we've talked about pathos in class, as well as the examples we’ve looked at. The following words/phrases may be helpful to you: "The writer uses _________ to make readers feel _____________. However, readers who believe ______________ may respond by to such language/images by feeling __________." "Perhaps the writer intends the audience to think/feel/believe/act ___________ by arousing the emotion of __________."

My point is that you don't have to have the definitive word on what the intentions of the text are; you can suggest various possibilities that the might be working (at the same time) in the text.

This project should be word-processed in 12 pt. font, double-spaced, and ONE page.  If possible, photocopy the text you’re analyzing and staple it to the analysis.