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.
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
Koalas
Affected by fire
They are ok?
Argument Example
“The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Adichie.
To quote a CNN article on the Danger of a Single Story:
Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie believes in the power of stories, and warns that hearing only one about a people or nation leads to ignorance. She says the truth is revealed by many tales.
She illustrates this with a story about coming to the United States, as a middle-class daughter of a professor and an administrator, and meeting her college roommate. Adichie says that her roommate’s “default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning, pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa. A single story of catastrophe.”
Adichie also tells how growing up in Nigeria reading only American and English children’s books made her deaf to her authentic voice. As a child, she wrote about such things as blue-eyed white children eating apples, thinking brown skin and mangos had no place in literature. That changed as she discovered African writers, particularly the Nigerian Chinua Achebe.
This is a great quote that highlights some of the moves we need to do in our article. It summarizes her topic, problem she is addressing, and solution; including examples she uses.
Topic: Many people do not realize that they are getting only one story. A single story is incomplete and she says dangerous.
Problem: Having a single story about an issue or group of people leads to stereotypes and incomplete information.
Solution: To look for multiple stories of whatever issue or topic you are hearing. She recommends we get our news and stories from multiple perspectives.
Reasons and evidence: She gives examples from her personal life to highlight that she has a personal connection.
Background: She gives background information, citing quotes and examples that place her issue in a historical context. She also uses current examples to place the issue in a contemporary context.
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