After reading this week’s chapter, I could not help noticing the strong relationship between Pathos and descriptive (colorful) language. At first, I thought my blog topic would be about understanding the mood (my blog tagline was can you feel the mood today?) but I decided that I spent too much time this weekend babysitting my younger siblings who love the Lion King (especially Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?) . So I looked over my reading notes and tried to forget for a moment the Lion King’s soundtrack and my mind focused on the relationship between pathetic proofs and descriptions. In this blog, I will discuss this point.
When I was attending school, I was always told that I needed to scale down my vivid language. My one high school teacher actually told me that I was too emotional whenever I argued on the debate team (yes, the secret is out…) and in my writings. I was instructed to keep with the facts and to use words like “Therefore,” “Thus,” “Hence,” and “According to (still sends shivers up my spine). I craved and longed to utilize rich and colorful words. Thus, I understood the point that Crowley and Hawhee discussed about our modern society’s great disdain for emotional (descriptive) communication. They write that “because of the modern reverence for reason and our habit of making a sharp distinction between reason and the emotions” and “In our culture, if you’re emotional, your irrational” (Crowley and Hawhee 247). Yet, it is this exact attitude that has damaged rhetoric and destroyed writing. Honestly, what speech or book did you last attend or read that did not appeal to your emotions? The first descriptive word that comes to my mind about such meetings or books is dull. Our society wants to appear as “calm, [with a] studied approach to issues” and yet, “Contemporary advertisers and political spin artists (and may I add best-selling authors, and well known orators, actors, etc.) also understand the important role played by emotion in our responses to their messages” (247). Thus, we live in a world that loves and craves colors and yet, scholastic institutions are trying to keep everyone in neutral hues. I felt that this chapter was a rally cry, declaring that it’s time to paint the town red, purple, lime green and neon orange through the frequent use of descriptive language.
Crowley and Hawhee discuss the importance of vivid examples to evoke an emotional response from one’s audience. For example, both authors discuss an example of a 9/11 experience. They write that “accounts or images can still evoke emotions we felt then” (247). They then utilize a brief statement from Phil Scraton whose vivid narrative impacts the reader. The one passage that I felt was very descriptive and thus, emotional was the last line. He writes “They reminded me of rescue workers recounting disaster scenes where the only sounds they could hear, as they listened for potential survivors, were those of mobile phones ringing from the debris as desperate relatives tried to make contact” (248). Next to this passage, I wrote chilling. His vivid language invites me into the situation. While reading this line, I am now alongside a rescue worker hearing numerous phones ring in a hazy wasteland and I am immediately impacted. While reading his entire narrative, numerous images infiltrated my brain which produced an emotional response. (A few years ago, I caught a 9/11 documentary on tv and the narrator announced that in the hours after the attack, rescue workers could hear the beeping of firefighter locaters going off as they worked. His voice was silenced and all viewers, alongside the rescue workers, could hear the beeping. That scene immediately entered my mind while reading this text). Thus, Scraton followed the advice of the ancient rhetors, like Quintilian, who “argued” that “Vivid depictions of events… stir the emotions of an audience exactly as if they had been present when it occurred” (258).
Last week, I had blogged about creating a hook that captivates and captures the audience’s attention. This week, the section on enargeia, focuses on how these hook lines are vital to speeches, articles and books. According to Crowley and Hawhee, enargeia, the creation of a vivid scene, was important because “the most effective emotional appeals actually make an issue come alive for audiences, make them see vividly what is at stake…supply audience with a reason for identifying with an issue, thus moving away from indifference toward either acceptance or rejection of a position” (257). Thus, enargeia accounts are meant to emotional draw the reader or listener in so that they can finally respond to an issue. Otherwise, what is the point of speeches, books, newspapers, protests, rallies, etc. if not to illicit a passionate response.
Lastly, Crowley and Hawhee discuss the use of honorific and pejorative language. Both authors declare that “Another way to evoke emotions is to use words that are honorific (positive) or pejorative (negative)” (260). These positive or negative descriptive words aid in describing a situation in order for the reader or listener to form a response. Crowley and Hawhee’s two examples illustrate just how powerful these vivid words are to a statement. They write that “Without the pejorative language [in the James Wolcott article], much of the emotional appeal of the original passage disappear” (261). Thus, the article sample without the descriptive language loses most of its punch and it becomes rather dull and uninteresting. Since the point of almost all discourse is to stir responses and actions, it is important that writers and speakers keep the audience members captivated through the use of descriptive language. Crowley and Hawhee agree, stating that “vivid descriptions can lay the groundwork for-or actually make-an argument” and that “Descriptions can also be persuasive” (265). Thus, one can see that vivid language is vital to rhetors and writers.
I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter! I will greatly miss this Thursday’s class and discussion but I look forward to the next one! If anyone is interested in ever presenting at a conference, I strongly recommend the following two websites:
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/
http://www.h-net.org/announce/group.cgi?type=CFPs
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