Thursday, January 19, 2012
Emotional reasoning and the rhetoric of social justice
Before class on Tuesday, I'd like you to respond to the question we started our discussion with today: What role do appeals to pathos play in arguments for social justice? Using today’s (and Tuesday’s, if you like) readings and film, draft a few paragraphs in which you make a case for how arguments for social justice—especially those in relation to the murder of Fred Martinez, the acceptance of Native American third and fourth gender roles and sexual identities, or the documentation and memorializing of the Sand Creek Massacre—draw on or are built upon emotional reasoning. How does such reasoning contribute to the persuasiveness of claims made about these issues?
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The act of persuasion is sculpted differently when it falls within the realm of social justice. This is due to the fact that defining what makes a society just is in intricate compilation of personal beliefs, practical boundaries, and multifaceted solutions. When making an argument about social justice, the appeal to pathos has a unique and powerful role. I believe this is because when dealing with matters of privilege distribution, it is emotional reasoning rather than logical reason that triggers action. An example of this can be seen in the film Two Spirits. The Story of Fred Martinez is a glaring display of the misdistribution of privilege and power. However his story is not told in the light of facts and figures about hate crimes, but rather as an emotional tribute to who he was in his life and what was taken away by his murder. Injustice does not exist in numbers and demographics, but in emotion. The murder of Fred Martinez does not just add to the number of hate crimes, but evokes a strong emotional sense of unfairness and wrongdoing. It is this emotional response that strongly persuades action against violence. The poetry about the Sand Creek Massacre also displays the power of an appeal to pathos when dealing with social justice issues. When the Sand Creek Massacre is depicted historically, with statistics about how many humans were killed and of the causes and effects of the event, it is illustrated as simply something that happened in the past. However, when such poetry is written about the massacre it becomes personalized. When the event is illuminated solely though emotion, there is a level of humanistic connectivity that triggers a stronger and more significant response.
ReplyDeleteIn “What is Rhetoric?” Covino says, “The central idea underlying pathos is that an effective text will somehow activate or draw upon the sympathies and emotions of the auditors, causing them to attend to and accept its ideas, propositions, or calls for action.” Thus in order for an argument to work, the audience must be engaged in order to be moved to action. They must have an emotional investment in the situation. Not only do emotions influence our judgments, but also they play an integral role in how we understand the world. Kastely says, “The audience can only take over the understandings offered by a speech if they speak seriously to the audience’s interest.” Thus, a rhetoric that is only focused upon reason will be unsuccessful in moving the audience towards an understanding.
ReplyDeleteOnce our emotions are targeted, then we can progress towards rational thought, or reason. Thus, thought and feeling cannot be separated. Logos and Pathos are both needed for a successful rhetoric. In the film Two Spirits, the major premise is that 3rd and 4th sexualities should be respected. The audience can only come to this reasoning after they are emotionally engaged in the argument. This is done so by emotional testimonies of Fred Martinez’s mother and other Nadleehs. In another example of emotional reasoning, Roberts and Halaas’, Written in Blood, plays to the emotions of the reader in order to advance their argument. Through the use of enargeia, or the vivid depiction of the children and women that were brutally beaten, logic develops out of emotion. They depict the so called, ‘civilized men’ under Chivington as being uncivilized. Thus, they point out the inconsistencies and get the people on their side. This is an effective use of emotional reasoning.
When arguing about social justice, authors walk a tricky line. Using too many emotional appeals can be overload for an audience. Additionally, some substance and proof of a problem is needed to convince people that there is a problem present, and logos is needed to persuade the audience that the author’s solution he is advocating is correct. However, the power of pathos should not be underestimated when crafting an argument about social justice.
ReplyDeleteIn the film Two Spirits, writers introduce the audience to the character of Fred. They play up the idea that he was full of untapped potential and his traits of kindness and generosity (in other words, employing the use of ethos) to demonstrate Fred’s decency as a human being and his worth to society. They then recreate scenes, like Fred’s murder, and share stories which are meant to evoke pity and sympathy for Fred and his plight as a gay, Native American, young man. This creates a sense of immediacy and closeness between the audience and Fred, which makes the stories more poignant and makes the cause the writers are arguing for, in this case gay rights, more necessary. It makes the cause more personal to the audience as well as creating a human element that makes it more relatable for the audience. By using pathos in this way, authors can enhance their argument arguing for the correction of a social injustice.
When it comes to rhetoric, there are many aspects that lead to the strength of persuasion that comes through in an article. The appeals to Ethos, Logos, and rhetorical constraints are all important in making a sound argument, but it is the appeal to pathos that makes an audience commited and invested in one viewpoint. In Two Spirits the argument that western culture has destroyed the traditional values on sexuality held in Navajo culture appeals to ethos and logos by the testimonies of Navajo tribal members. This alone is enough to explain the ways of the nadeeli, but once the audience is exposed to Fred, and his personal life, their investment in the rhetor’s argument are solidified by an emotional attachment. Not only do Nadeeli exist, but the audience feels as if they know Fred, and his death and mistreatment throughout his life becomes even more devastating as the viewer has become emotionally attached to him as an individual while watching the film.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Sand Creek massacre was going to trial the pathos had not been established. It was not until over 100 years later when the letters of Captain Soule and Joseph Cramer were found with the horrific first hand accounts of the battle that the testimony in front of congress for Sand Creek to become a national historic site was fully supported and passed. Before those letters were found the trials that had occurred in order to try and punish the people responsible were not successful.
It is from the appeal to pathos that not only can we convince others that our argument is valid, but we can use the emotional values they have to call them to action. Pathos is the difference between simply agreeing with an argument and supporting an argument.
The emotional appeal to pathos in rhetorical arguments of social justice is effective because social justice issues draw upon an individual’s beliefs. When a social justice issue arises and a people want this issue to be acted upon, rhetoric is often used to draw people to action. The particular effectiveness of these arguments often is closely correlated with the timing. The kairos of a rhetorical argument is key because it can maximize the emotion the audience feels. Social justice issues are often based upon societal differences in belief and when people’s beliefs are infringed upon by opposing views emotions are always guaranteed to follow. Whether it is blood boiling anger or heart throbbing compassion, individuals will feel some emotion and often act and make decisions based upon those emotions.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of the Laramie Project and the murder of Fred Martinez, this emotional appeal to pathos is maximized by the kairos. The social justice issue of tolerance of gender and sexuality issues is projected in these two films. Both films use the appeal to pathos by describing the tragic deaths of two young men. The vast majority of people would feel compassion towards the victims of these two stories after hearing the treachery of their stories.
Both of these stories capitalize on the fact that most people will feel compassion when they learn about the murder of a young person, regardless of sexuality. They use this to build awareness and make a more persuasive argument for the audience to act upon the issue. When such a strong emotional reaction can be expected from a majority of the audience, it increases the possibility that the audience will take action to change society so such injustices are no more.
Social justice issues tend to be based in part in emotion and are therefore easily swayed by emotion. Appeals to pathos allow an argument to be more driven by connecting a person more fully to what is being said. Also, it can help to someone to open their mind to an idea they are opposed to. By creating an emotion in the reader it connects them to the piece and allows them to become more accepting of the argument.
ReplyDeleteThis can be seen in any case that deals with humanity, especially in cases where people are in any way abused and belittled. A perfect case to illustrate this is the question of sexuality, especially in regards to Native Americans. The film Two Spirits, as well as several of the articles we have read, showcases perfectly the use of pathos. Two Spirits uses pathos by creating a compassion and respect for Fred which in turn causes the audience to be upset by his horrendous mistreatment. Similarly the Paula Gunn Allen article uses pathos by trying to create a sense of injustice. This allows her to show that there was not all of the outcomes from colonizing the Frontier were positive. This appeal to pathos was partially easier because there was no need to prove that women should not be beaten because that had already become fairly commonly accepted. Also, Written in Blood shows appeals to pathos through its vivid descriptions of things that are usually considered to be unthinkably cruel. For each of these cases, appeals to pathos strengthened their argument, and helped to make it, by connecting the audience to the injustice involved. Pathos allowed each piece to deepen their argument by relating to the audience on a level other than logic.
After reading and discussing the idea using pathos in argumentation, I have home to the conclusion that pathos’s ability to connect to people’s emotions is crucial to how persuasive an argument can be. In James Kastely’s Pathos Rhetoric and Emotion the importance and use of emotion to persuade is because “Emotions are responses to the world that carry with them beliefs about the world and perceptions as to its present state” (10). In other words a rhetor needs to be able to see how his/her audience sees the world or what emotional ties that they have to it to be able to convince them that that they need to change.
ReplyDeleteI believe the history between Native and European Americans (and the greater understanding of this by the Native Americans) give them the power to hopefully believe that most European Americans are sickened by the atrocities that their ancestors committed against them (like the Sand Creek Massacre) and take this opportunity to take the position of rhetor and communicate with us how they view different aspects of life. In the film Two Spirits the position of rhetor is take with the hope to communicate that people of third and fourth gender are people to be cherished (a belief based in emotion that not many European Americans have). This film is centered around the story of Fred Martinez was a member of the third and fourth gender community and who was murdered because of his and her identity. The ethos held by the Native American community depicted in this film by their connection to the third and fourth genders, Fred Martinez and, the history of Native Americans gives them the power to effectively use pathos to educate people outside of their community.
What makes something unjust? Logically, we cannot answer this question. We base our answers on our beliefs and values, which are directly tied to our emotions. This is why emotional reasoning plays such a large part in the rhetoric of social justice—to be persuasive, any text must provide a significant amount of pathos, aiming to allow the audience to analyze their emotions in context of the issue on hand.
ReplyDeleteIn science, facts provide sufficient persuasiveness. In a context social justice, however, the audience needs to be connected to the evidence on a more personal, human level. The film Two Spirits is an excellent example of this. By creating a very personal narrative of Fred Martinez’s life and murder, the audience witnesses the unfairness of his death on a much deeper level compared to the effect his death would have simply as a statistic. We are called to action by our emotions—we take action on what we feel is right, not what we are told or shown is right. In this regard, Two Spirits persuades us not by telling us Fred Martinez’s murder was unjust, but by telling his story in a way in which our emotional response allows us to come to our own conclusion of injustice.
Through analysis of films such as “Two Spirits” and rhetorical documents like those describing the Sand Creek massacre, it becomes apparent that in order for an argument regarding social justice to be effective, an appeal to pathos is necessary. In the movie “Two Spirits,” a very strong emotional appeal is built between the audience and Fred. The beginning of the movie contains pictures of Fred as a small, cute child, which creates this emotional bond. The interviews with Fred’s mother and some of the others who knew him strengthen this bond because they talk about him and say what kind of an extraordinary human being that he really was while pictures of him pan across the screen. This puts a face with the description and evokes a sense of loss within the audience, which is key to the argument of the movie regarding social justice. Without this appeal to pathos, the movie would only be recounting the story of a murder, not making a compelling argument for protecting social justice.
ReplyDeleteAnother piece of rhetoric that employs the use of pathos in order to strengthen its argument are the ‘Soule-Cramer Sand Creek Massacre Letters: Written in Blood.’ These letters are the personal recounts of the tragic Sand Creek Massacre, written by Captain S.S. Soule and Lieutenant Joe A. Cramer. They recount every gruesome detail observed by the two men that day, and for this very reason, they create an appeal to pathos directed towards all those who suffered and all of those who are still affected by the incident. Through the use of detail and prose, the letters establish a strong argument regarding social justice and the treatment of Native Americans and minority groups in general.
Without emotion, the art of persuasion would hold no rhetorical value in the area of social justice. The act of persuasion would follow a series of logical steps to produce a fair and logical action. This may work for regular crimes with a set fine or prison sentence as “justice;” however, within the realm of social justice, the lack of precedent in proper punishment is the issue at hand, and therefore cannot be systematically reached. Thus, persuasion, with the aid of emotional triggers, must be utilized to enact a movement.
ReplyDeleteParticularly in dealing with hate crimes, an emotional pull on the target audience must be achieved in order to reach an expected response. The various methods of invoking the audiences’ pathos can be as unique or as cliché as the rhetor chooses, but the result is effective if it appeals to the audiences’ pathos in any way. In the film “The Laramie Project” Moisés Kaufmen effectively exploits many manners of persuasion to build and serve his argument, but the emotional appeal of certain aspects of his play-made-film pushed his work from just a documentary on the murder of Matthew Shepard, to the politically-charged, non-fictional drama that informed the world on the heinous facts surrounding the hate crime committed in Laramie, Wyoming. In much the same way, the film “Two Spirits” presents its statement through the appeal to pathos. For an audience that may not be well versed in the beliefs and traditions of Navaho culture, the idea of third and fourth gender roles is not the most friendly topic within social justice to accept, much less acknowledge the argument itself. When the producers open up the audience through more emotional routes, and their pathos is effected, it is more likely a message will be received in any manner.
Regardless of an audiences’ open-mindedness, the persuasive appeal to pathos within social justice will be of some importance and effectiveness. Human beings are not robots and are naturally wired (excuse the pun) to link data with emotional response. Same with social reasoning. When attempting to connect a reported action or occurrence with the most just response, a human must follow past experiences and social norms. These, though it may not be prevalent, were once formulated with the aid of emotions and logic. However, in the area of social justice, the uncharted territory for such emotionally charged events calls for emotional persuasion to produce a logical response and solution. A movement, if you will. And as history has shown, numerous times, a movement is never successful without the persuasive utilization of its leaders and the elicited emotional response of the audience.
Appeals to pathos are one of the most pivotal ways to convince people that an argument has value. People are emotional beings and by appealing to that most fundamental part of their nature, a rhetor is better able to get their message across. With regards to social justice, appealing to pathos has far reaching effects. People are more inclined to change something if they can be motivated to do so on an emotional level. James Kastely said it best in his article Rhetoric and Emotion when he made the assertion that someone may accept and argument if it is presented logically, but they will not commit to it without an emotional connection. An example of how pathos is used to persuade is in the documentary Two Sprits the movie continually appealed to the pathos involved with seeing a mother lose her child; to the emotional response that hearing accounts from people who are different about how they were treated. The documentary motivates its viewers to understand that gender discrimination of any type of gender, and the complexities of different sexual identities, and to help stop violence. Another fantastic example of pathos is from the letters written by Soule and Cramer, who were firsthand witness of the horrific Sand Creek Massacre. Each Captain refused to fire on the Native Americans at Sand Creek, and they also did not allow men under their command to attack. After the massacre they wrote letters infused with pathos, as they described the horrors they witnessed. They both used pathos, by graphically describing what they had seen, in an attempt to get their commanding officers to act on investigating the massacre. Their letters were read to Congress and the pathos included in them helped successfully motivate congress to act. In short, pathos is extremely powerful, and for a rhetor to have a successful argument they must correctly use it.
ReplyDeleteAn emotion is a feeling. It is a reaction caused by a person, event, text, or observation that makes us feel a certain way. Playing upon emotion is a rhetorical tool used to help convey the message from the rhetor to their audience. Everyone comes into a text with their own views and feelings on the subject matter at hand. It is the job of the rhetor to build on the emotions of its viewers in order to get them to feel a certain way. In Rhetoric and Emotion, “According to Gorgias, the power of the rhetoric resides in its ability to engage and transform emotions, and this power is pronounced as to be invincible.”
ReplyDeleteAppealing to pathos is vital in arguments for social justice because by presenting a situation that is an example of social injustice, the audience will be forced to feel a certain way (hopefully sad, angry, or upset), interpret that feeling, and then know that what they’re witnessing is wrong and should be changed. The film Two Spirits largely plays upon its audience’s emotions to get them to acknowledge the social injustice that occurred against Fred Martinez. The film reenacts Fred Martinez’s murder, which makes the audience feel upset, angry, and almost powerless because they’re watching something that makes them feel so sick but they can’t do anything about it. By feeling this way, and acknowledging that feeling, then one can apply it to what they’re viewing and know that it’s wrong. Two Spirits does this not only with Fred’s murder, but by showing his mother crying at the news of his death, and with images and quotes of what a unique and happy person Fred Martinez was. Viewing a social injustice, like Fred Martinez’s murder, forces an audience to experience some emotion they may not wish to feel, and hopefully, if strong enough, this feeling can cause action that will fight for social justice.
Kastley wrote that our emotions play a practical role in our reasoning because of the degree of which they are intertwined with our convictions. Emotions are essentially,
ReplyDelete“part of the fabric of our lives, and we fell their authority in our emotional responses…if who one loves, fears, loathes, envies, or pities is not simply the product of accident but reflects a person’s values and perceptions, then emotions in some way enact a person’s attitudes” (223).
With this is mind is apparent that pathos works more like a stimulus in regards to social justice. Whether we’re reading about the harsh treatment of Native Americans or hate crimes in Laramie, the pathos in these contexts helps to paint the horrid picture that stimulates an emotion within. Although the emotion may differ depending on context, typically the vivid pathos illustrated with the depiction of a hate crime causes us to be indignant toward those types of actions. We feel this indignation and as a result we want to act. That’s where social justice comes into play. Pathos stimulates the emotions that cause the audience to want to make a change. However, too much pathos can lead us to question the writer’s ethos. For example, in How the West was Really Won, author Paula Gunn Allen relies heavily on her appeal to pathos. However, she lacks evidence and support for her pathos which weakens her claim because “An audience that takes on the role of judge becomes active and is not easily subjected to manipulation as it would be were it a mere passive spectator” (226). Her claim loses validity simply because it relies on pathos and noting else.
Robert and Hallaas Written in Blood, had a very strong appeal to pathos in formulating social justice. Unlike Allen, they included in text citations that made the article more credible plus they coupled the ethos and the pathos perfectly when quoting Major Anthony “ by this time hundreds of women and children were coming towards us and getting on their knees for mercy. Anthony shouted, “Kill the sons of bitches!” (326). In this case the pathos juxtaposes the cruelty from the soldiers against that of the frailty and vulnerability of the Native Americans. As a result, the audience is left with a feeling of possibly guilt and fury. These emotions thus create the “what now factor. ” As the audience, we might not be able to go back in time and quell the past between the Americans and the Indians but as social justice is concerned we can act now to fix any prevailing side effects from what happened in the past.
According to Kastely, “How reality is understood-what is taken to be reality-is deeply entangled in how an audience feels about reality. A situation looks one way to pa person who is angry and another way to a person is afraid, or jealous, or calm, or filled with hate” (Kastely 225). But, I think reality isn't just influenced by emotion, it is emotion, or at least based solely on emotion. Without feeling, we have no opinion, no perception of how or what things are. Humans are constantly interpreting the narrative and arguments of everything. We are severely addicted to judgement, and without any form of reliable rehab we will continue automatically judging everything until the day we die. It's not necessarily bad though. It's natural, everyone does it, and therefore we don't really have any means of comparison. It could negatively affect our lives, but there's simply just no way to know. Either way, our addiction to emotion, to judgement, allows pathos to be wonderfully effective. Every scene of Two Spirits had some form of pathos, including the scenes that seemed to be just based on information regarding Fred's life. Albeit, the level of pathos did vary from scene to scene, and there were scenes where the pathos was incredibly obvious and effective. For instance, the re-enactment of Fred's murder really tore at the old heart strings. By showing something that so clearly goes against basic human ethics, the director of the film ensured that we not only understood the argument that was being made, but also sided with it. However, whether or not we, as an audience, were manipulated is still up for debate.
ReplyDeleteAt their very cores humans are incredibly dependent and driven by emotion. It is emotion that makes people perform selfless and difficult tasks that aren't dictated by pure instinct. It is because of the fact that emotion is at our center, that authors have so frequently played upon it to gain the minds of readers. In the context of social justice it is especially important to appeal to the emotions of the reader as the issues are ones that often do not translate to a set of facts, but rather communicate a set of ideas for the reader to act on. In terms of the author the best way to access the emotional center of people is through the use of pathos in their writing. In many examples of film and writing, including The Laramie Project and Two Spirit, it is obvious that the writing is attempting to grab at the hearts of the audience. It is because of this emotional interaction that the films actually take on a persuasive tone rather than an informative one. To simply spout off the facts of Fred's death and the definition of a TwoSpirit would have no actual persuasive power to the audience, but to take the approach of showing the raw emotions of the people that knew him the writes are better able to communicate the human tragedy that the death of Fred consists of. Emotion is universal and no matter your politics or your motivations, your emotions are one of those things that do not differ greatly from person to person making them the universal language of people. When you tie this in with the fact that emotions are things that drive us to do the things that we do, then the true power and necessity of Pathos begins to come into the light.
ReplyDeleteWhen examining different rhetorical strategies, one can find that the use of pathos, appeals to emotions, is one of the most effective ways in which to convince an audience to agree with a certain view. Throughout history, scholars of rhetoric have debated the morality of the use of these emotional appeals. Some have thought that an argument should rely solely on logical reasoning to persuade an audience, while others, such as Kastley, have recognized the importance of using emotion in an argument. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with the morality of the use of pathos, it can be agreed that emotional appeals are very powerful and effective in persuasion.
ReplyDeleteArguments of social justice rely heavily on the use of pathos. This makes sense considering that such arguments revolve around inequality of treatments and privileges among groups that causes harm to be done to one group. Describing this harm that comes to these certain groups makes it easy to create an emotional appeal. One example of this is the murder of Matthew Shepard. The story by itself is already somewhat of an appeal to pathos. Kaufman brought the emotions of this story to life and made them clear to the audience through The Laramie Project.
Another example is the murder of Fred Martinez. It is a similar story: a young man is murdered essentially because he is not heterosexual. Two Spirits, the film that documents Fred’s life and death, draws upon the emotions surrounding this case to influence the audience. The early scenes showing young Fred as a cute happy child are later contrasted with a brutal reenactment of his murder. The sequencing of establishing Fred’s good nature, slowly revealing his sexual identity, and then showing his brutal unprovoked murder maximizes the potential for an emotional response to be triggered in the audience. Such sequencing causes the audience to initially connect with Fred and grow to respect his sexual identity, thus invoking a shocked and emotional reaction to his murder.
Two Spirits is a film documenting the life and murder of Fred Martinez. Fred grew up in a family of native americans who accepted and welcomed those who had sexual identities that were beyond what we in western society consider to be normal. Two Spirits attempts to convince the audience of the wrongfulness of Fred's murder by playing on the emotions of the audience.
ReplyDeleteThe movie opens with the telling of Fred's childhood and early teen years. Even if the audience members do not support or believe in homosexuality, this introduction and showing of Fred's life as a normal child draw on the emotions of anyone who has been a child or a parent. The emotional and dramatic display of his mother's reaction to his death and the graphic recreation of the murder itself serve to invoke an emotional response in the audience. Even if they disagree with the act of Fred being gay, they cannot turn away from the wrongfulness of his death.
The movie continues this argument through the use of pathos in emotional response from the audience by showing them an example of the many members of today's native american community that continue to be two spirit beings. The flow of the argument for social justice in terms of acceptance of homosexuals and the wrongfulness and hurt that hate crimes can cause is so effective in this movie because of the emotional attachment it builds on Fred from the audience. Therefore the audience must at least re-evaluate their opinions on hate crimes and homosexuality if they felt any emotional response at all.