101 Pathos and Visual Rhetoric Professor Ramos Blog

101 Pathos and Visual Rhetoric Four Strategies Quick Write Take a couple minutes and analyze this image. 4 Ways to Persuade with Emotion (Pathos) Four Strategies Concrete Examples Connotative Diction Metaphors and Similes Tone Appeals to pathos target the link between audience members and their values. When we act on our values, we experience emotions like happiness, pride, satisfaction, etc. When we do not, we often feel shame, fear, or anger. The same goes for the actions of people around us: we are often pleased when the actions of people around us align with our values and angry when they don’t. Persuasion: Emotion Handout Visual Rhetoric 1. We live in a Visual Culture We live in a visual culture. We are saturated in images at nearly every moment of our waking lives. For this reason, it is important to develop critical thinking skills that allow us to read images. I challenge you to engage with images actively instead of passively. Take the images apart in order to understand their messages. Accept, reject, or qualify those claims. 2. Visual Media as Texts Learning to read images, deconstruct, and engage with them will make us better readers of texts, and vice versa. Visual materials that accompany written arguments serve several purposes. First, they appeal to the reader’s emotions. While images can be logical, they first appeal to the senses of the reader before they are analyzed more logically. In other words, their immediate impact is more on the viewer’s heart than the mind. Pictures can also serve as visual evidence, establishing proof that something occurred or appeared in a certain way. Pictures can help clarify data with graphs and tables and can also be used to confuse or trick an audience with graphs and tables. Pictures can add humor or satire to an argument. Visual images can be read as text, as such we need to think critically about them. Looking closely we can discern not only what they show but also how and why. Appeals to Emotion Images can be used to instill an emotional response in the audience. Even implied images in text can be very emotionally powerful. A description of blood stained clothes draws certain emotions in a reader. Lawyers know how important visuals can be. They dress their defendants in suits and ties to make them seem more credible. Types of emotional appeals: appeal to pity appeal to fear appeal to self-interest Sexual bandwagon humor celebrity testimonials identity prejudice lifestyle stereotypes patriotic Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not Reason. – Benjamin Franklin Intro to Fallacies Logically Fallacious Key Terms Argument: A conclusion together with the premises that support it. Premise: A reason offered as support for another claim. Conclusion: A claim that is supported by a premise. Valid: An argument whose premises genuinely support its conclusion. Unsound: An argument that has at least one false premise. Fallacy: An argument that relies upon faulty reasoning. Booby-trap: An argument that, while not a fallacy itself, might lead an inattentive reader to commit a fallacy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fallacies This is a great resource for further reading on fallacies and how they are  not so simple. The article  lists 223 of the most common fallacies. I do not expect you to know them all or to never use any. Fallacies are controversial. We appreciate logic and honesty in Western rhetorical thinking and that is at odds with many fallacies. Fallacies are not necessarily wrong, they work very well and are very good at persuading people. Fallacies are considered unethical and so we try to avoid them. They are thought of as flaws in thought, tricks, and sneaky uses of persuasion to convince others. Images as Arguments Images can be used to help us see the argument that the author is intending. They can be used to lower our skepticism, visual proof of something that happened. This is problematic nowadays with the popularity of programs such as Photoshop, where images can be changed or manipulated. Now more than ever, we have to be weary of taking images at face value. We have to critically think about images and their intended effect. Three basic questions we can ask. Who produced the image? Who distributed the image? Who consumed the image? Our textbook suggests a rule for writers. If you think that pictures will help you make the point you are arguing, include them with captions explaining their sources and relevance. I Have a Dream Speech The now famous speech â€Å"I have a Dream† by Dr. Martin Luther King was aided by visuals when it was delivered. He is at the Washington Monument, speaking to hundreds of thousands, smiling and waving. Behind him is the Lincoln Memorial. In this Aug. 28, 1963, black-and-white file photo Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, addresses marchers during his â€Å"I Have a Dream† speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The 45th anniversary of the iconic leader’s most memorable speech coincides with the day when another African-American leader, Barack Obama, is scheduled to makes a historic speech of his own, accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States Aug. 28, 2008, in Denver, Colo. (AP Photo/File) This image shows him speaking with people and some police behind him. The image you choose to use will add meaning to your text. Be careful which images you choose. What does it say if we use his mug shot from one of the many protests he was arrested at? Or this one. Have you ever seen this image of Dr. King? Or this one? Time’s Man of the Year 1964 The image your choose can help your audience understand your argument. 101 Pathos and Visual Rhetoric Images as Arguments 1937 photo by Margaret Bourke-White – Breadline during Louisville Flood. Quick Write Take a couple minutes and analyze this image. Images as Arguments Images can be used to help us see the argument that the author is intending. They can be used to lower our skepticism, visual proof of something that happened. This is problematic nowadays with the popularity of programs such as Photoshop, where images can be changed or manipulated. Now more than ever, we have to be weary of taking images at face value. We have to critically think about images and their intended effect. Three basic questions we can ask. Who produced the image? Who distributed the image? Who consumed the image? Our textbook suggests a rule for writers. If you think that pictures will help you make the point you are arguing, include them with captions explaining their sources and relevance. 4 Ways to Persuade with Emotion (Pathos) Four Strategies Concrete Examples Connotative Diction Metaphors and Similes Tone Appeals to pathos target the link between audience members and their values. When we act on our values, we experience emotions like happiness, pride, satisfaction, etc. When we do not, we often feel shame, fear, or anger. The same goes for the actions of people around us: we are often pleased when the actions of people around us align with our values and angry when they don’t. Persuasion: Emotion Handout Visual Rhetoric 1. We live in a Visual Culture We live in a visual culture. We are saturated in images at nearly every moment of our waking lives. For this reason, it is important to develop critical thinking skills that allow us to read images. I challenge you to engage with images actively instead of passively. Take the images apart in order to understand their messages. Accept, reject, or qualify those claims. 2. Visual Media as Texts Learning to read images, deconstruct, and engage with them will make us better readers of texts, and vice versa. Visual materials that accompany written arguments serve several purposes. First, they appeal to the reader’s emotions. While images can be logical, they first appeal to the senses of the reader before they are analyzed more logically. In other words, their immediate impact is more on the viewer’s heart than the mind. Pictures can also serve as visual evidence, establishing proof that something occurred or appeared in a certain way. Pictures can help clarify data with graphs and tables and can also be used to confuse or trick an audience with graphs and tables. Pictures can add humor or satire to an argument. Visual images can be read as text, as such we need to think critically about them. Looking closely we can discern not only what they show but also how and why. Appeals to Emotion Images can be used to instill an emotional response in the audience. Even implied images in text can be very emotionally powerful. A description of blood stained clothes draws certain emotions in a reader. Lawyers know how important visuals can be. They dress their defendants in suits and ties to make them seem more credible. Types of emotional appeals: appeal to pity appeal to fear appeal to self-interest Sexual bandwagon humor celebrity testimonials identity prejudice lifestyle stereotypes patriotic Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not Reason. – Benjamin Franklin Graff â€Å"Hidden Intellectualism† (369) In the article â€Å"Hidden Intellectualism,† Gerald Graff argues that schools should encourage students to write about subjects that interests them. While passion about a subject does not necessarily mean they will write well about it, they can benefit from reflective and analytical writing about subjects they care about. Nonacademic subjects can be â€Å"more intellectual than school.† What does he mean by intellectual here? Real intellectuals turn any subject, however lightweight it may seem, into grist for their mill through thoughtful questions they bring to it, whereas a dullard will find a way to drain the interest out of the richest subject (265). Do you agree with this statement? Why? Who is his audience? What is his purpose? Give me the student anytime who writes a sharply argued, sociologically acute analysis of an issue in  Source  over the student who writes a life ­less explication of  Hamlet  or Socrates’  Apology  (270).