Emmeline Pankhurst's 'Death or Freedom': The Author's Use of the Appeals

This paper analyzes the types, forms, and effectiveness of the author's use of pathos to evoke emotion from their audience to persuade them to support the purpose of their message. Defined in the course pack as "using emotion to persuade" (Heasley et al. 128) pathos is a technique rhetorists use to garner an emotion response from their audience through one of four methods. These five methods are word choice, vivid examples, personal experience, scare tactics and sensory details; authors can employ these methods individually or in conjunction with one another to invoke a pathetic response from their audience.

Writers use pathos, ethos, and logos in their writing to appeal to their audience. Pathos is an appeal to emotions, ethos is an appeal to trust, and logos is an appeal to reasoning or logic. Frederick Douglass's, " What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" is about his views and the views of many slaves towards the Fourth of July. He uses ethos, pathos, and logos effectively to convey his central message.

Joey Franklin makes masterful use of rhetoric in his essay “Working at Wendy’s” to construct an entertaining and compelling argument in favor of recognizing that the workers of the service industry are more than just undistinguished drones, but rather complicated people, each with their own desires and stories. To this end, the author utilizes the effective rhetoric device of pathos, logos, and ethos. Franklin demonstrates an excellent use of imagery that serves as a conduit for empathy, which is vital for the use of pathos, the emotional appeal. In reference to logos, the appeal to logic, he paints the picture of a hard-working father that needs to provide for his family. This is a clear representation of common logic and ties into ethos, which is the rhetorical appeal to authority and ethics, in the sense that many people can relate to caring about and working to support family. For ethos, he establishes himself as your everyday working man — part of the working class. This shows that he’s clearly apt for speaking of the position he’s in, and allows the audience to relate to him through pathos.

Ethos appeals to credibility. In Mother Tongue, Tan builds ethos in her first sentence by writing, “I am not a scholar of English or literature”, and then in the next paragraph she says, “I am a writer”. These contradict each other and by writing this she gives her audience the perception that she’s humble and therefore gives herself credibility because she doesn’t sit on a pedestal. Nobody respects somebody who’s full of themselves and think that they’re better than everyone. Pathos appeals to emotion. Tan evokes emotion in the end when her mother says to her, “so easy to read”. Her mother is referring to the book Tan wrote specifically to appeal to her. Emotions of happiness and pride are evoked because she was successful in making something her mother could understand. Logos appeals to logic. Tan appeals to a sense of logic by convincing her readers that there’s no “correct” English, rather it’s how we use the language to get our ideas across. This is her whole idea of her story and she uses facts and analogies to help support it (Tan). Rhetorical appeals are used everyday in numerous ways often to make a person believe

Nicholas Carr addresses and adapts to his audience by effectively using pathos, a rhetorical appeal. The author captures his audience by appealing to their emotions. For example, Carr explains on page five,

The beginning of any thought provoking essay will hook its audience using a form of pathos. “Two of his sons returned home from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures a day”-(Rorabacher). The quote generates sympathy within us making us yearn to see a welcoming outcome and leaving the audience hooked. Eli Hager’s article follows a similar route informing us that “The state of Missouri sent Harris to the penitentiary in Boonvilee, 250 miles from his home and baby daughter”-(Hager). Again we sympathize with the loss of a family, but not all of the articles used grievance to hook us. In the “Quiet Alarm” the audience is informed of a vaudeville performer who performed deadly stunts involving hatchets, pins, and guns on himself to generate shockwaves in the audience. From these examples we identify how our emotions lure us into these texts.

Graff then goes on to establish his ethos in the first few paragraphs while continuing to expand the thoughts and ideas on pathos throughout his essay. He begins to build his community and trust by recognizing his own credentials and sharing his personal background in writing. One of the first things noticed from the footnote about Gerald Graff’s professional career is that he has vast experience in the writing department. He is an English professor at a prestigious university, a past president of the Modern Language Association, and part of the professional association of scholars and teachers of English and other languages (198). But, since his background only assists his argument and does not define it, it is crucial to also look at his word choice, mood, language, and ideology in order to fully claim Graff a credible author.

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail that went on to become one of the most controversial and important pieces of work during the Civil Rights Movement. Like many other well written rhetorics, King alludes and uses Aristotle’s three main appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. How does King uses these appeals in his rhetoric? King effectively uses these appeals to evoke his audience’s emotion to feel remorseful for the extremity that African Americans went through and dealt with.

While Henry’s speech was not particularly long, it packed quite the proverbial punch through its efficacious use of rhetoric and symbolism, and is looked to even today as an example of persuasive oratory. Throughout this paper, Henry’s rhetoric will be analyzed via an Aristotelian method of rhetorical analysis called the “rhetorical triangle.” According to an article on Study.com, written by Diedra Taylor, almost every form of rhetorical device can be categorized as one of the three points on this triangle: “Ethos,” “logos,” and “pathos.” While Aristotle, himself, did not originally postulate a triangular method of examination, he was the first influential intellectual to write about the three points previously mentioned, and because of this, the theory is credited to him. Taylor uses the analogy of a nacho chip to represent a particular piece of rhetoric, and toppings of guacamole, meat, and cheese to represent ethos, logos, and pathos, respectively. While a chip with only one or two of the toppings is still good, it is most delicious with all three in conjunction. The same is true of rhetoric; it is most persuasive when it contains a variety of the three types of devices, all working in concurrence with one another. In addition to this, it is very possible for some rhetorical anecdotes and devices to fall under the umbrella of more than one point on the triangle, but for the purposes of this paper, they will be examined one at a

Logos, pathos, and ethos have been utilized in writing from history to current day writing and literature. The three elements are called modes of persuasion that are used to convince the audience. We will be evaluating how Jackson used logos, pathos, and ethos to make his writing more convincing and appealing to his audience. To begin with, we will be examining logos used in writing.

Thomas Paine manages to include all three rhetorical appeals in one paragraph. He appeals to logos (logic) by claiming he is simply stating the facts and by asking readers to not only look at the present, but the future. Paine appeals to pathos (emotion) by acknowledging the audience's preexisting beliefs and values, and by asking them to set aside their biased opinions and to let their reason and emotions decide. By acknowledging the readers' values and referring to the "true character of a man", he establishes a common ground with his audience; this appeals to ethos (ethics), which helps the author gain his/her audience's trust based on their credibility and character.

Ever wonder how logos and pathos are used in writings and compared? We you can always learn how when reading MLK speeches and letters. “I Have a Dream” spoken by Martin Luther King in front of the Lincoln Memorial with thousands of black and whites listening. “Letter From Birmingham Jail” written by Martin Luther King in Birmingham jail to eight clergymen. In this paper I will compare how Martin Luther King uses logos and pathos from his letter and speech.

Assuming Names, by Tanya Thompson, was a mere sneak peek into the past of a young girl who fooled the FBI, Interpol, DEA, and numerous other federal offices. She has an innate hunger for adventure and will do anything to free herself of the curse of boredom. Tanya was also born with ability to charm people into believing her deep twisted lies. Throughout her account, Thompson is able to lure the reader into her life full of lies by using an ample amount of intricate diction, syntax, and other rhetorical strategies. The purpose of her book was to inform her audience, young adults, of what occurred during those many years, how she handled situations, and what emotions she felt.

For instance in the excerpt written by Jane Addams, she uses a lot of rhetoric when talking about the necessity for social settlements. In this excerpt there is one rhetoric in particular that stands out, which is pathos. Pathos stirs up feeling of sorrow, sympathy, and pity and that's exactly what Jane Addams does. Jane Addams put as lot of feeling into this piece of writing and that definitely helps build up her argument. When you read this you can get a

Her daughters are also mentioned as her followers to also display that Pankhurst is also a mother. She is often talked of as a military leader and so this article may suggest to the readers that she is after all still plays the part of a woman alongside her political virtues that she pursues. In this way, Pankhurst is seen as tougher and manlier when she is described as militant through her cause which creates a dynamic social perspective because of the preconceived notion of the separate spheres. This affects the notion of the separate sphere because the militant side of her shows that this woman uses force through reason and not emotion while fighting for the interest of politics and not just the home. Through the violence she has utilized, she shows that women are capable resorting to measures that men thought they are not capable of. So, Pankhurst in this way goes against all ideas of femininity but the author ties to create a balance of that taboo with her motherhood. Although she is described as militant, she is also described as