ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways of constructing appeals to emotion based on charged descriptions of people, objects, events, or actions. Whereas logos persuades based on cognitive beliefs derived from claims of fact, pathos persuades based on affective orientations derived from feelings of like and dislike, desire and fear, and pain and pleasure. The concepts employed thus come in opposite pairs relating to the attractive (+) and repulsive (−) spectrum of emotions, and they are organized according to their relationship to people (saint and sinner), objects (idol and abomination), events (utopia and wasteland), and actions (virtue and vice). The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how, within certain problematic situations, to attract people to certain things that are beneficial while repelling them from others that are harmful. If logos persuades an audience as to what is the best course of action based on belief, pathos motivates them to actually pursue that course of action out of fear or desire.
