Appeals are incredibly persuasive, and almost no one can resist it's allure. Whether it's to make you buy merchandise, choose a side, or change your mind, appeals work without fail in tugging at your heartstrings. While some people shun it as being deceiving, I disagree because it essentially adds flavor to any argument and is not so much deceiving as incredibly exaggerated. All in all, it's a very effective mode of persuasion.
The Crisis by Thomas Paine is an excellent example of writing loaded with various logical, emotional and ethical appeals. Every time I read "These are the times that try men's souls" I can almost envision freezing, hungry men that are huddled around a campfire reading this pamphlet. With the continued praise of their hardiness in such poor times, I picture them as glowing with pride, and then rage at the "summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" who are too scared. Paine uses logic to tell the soldiers that while the battles may be lost, they will certainly win the war. He goes on to appeal to ethics and emotions by picturing the British as a cruel, heartless people, and the patriots as courageous and bringers of liberty. By the end, I should think that the soldiers are screaming and cheering, ready to take on the British. While
The Crisis was effective propaganda, I'm sure that some of the facts were twisted around, and that the British had a similar pamphlet with completely different arguments.
I think all of us are incredibly impulsive creatures. Almost every week my family goes through the dilemma of impulse shopping; my dad has a predilection for sweets, my sister likes accessories, and my brother is obsessed with technology. I too am a hypocrite, for while I preach against the evils of impulsive buying and excessive spending, I still succumb and end up buying things that are too cute not to be bought. On another note, we as humans do lots of television watching; sometimes, the media can be a little biased, and the commercials and news segments might try and influence us by bringing out starving children, skewed statistics, or other heartbreaking news. Earlier, while I was on the edge of considering whether or not to donate to the Kony 2012 rage, I did a little research past the sob story and realized that a small percent actually went to the children, so I opted for UNICEF instead. Even thought some of the ads and appeals we see may be trying to get at a real point, I think it is best if we all try and take on a more critical mindset and weed out fact from flowery language. It doesn't hurt to have an appeal control us once in a while, but we shouldn't completely rely on these appeals and advertisements for a straightforward truth.
Nice viewpoint on persuasive appeals! They can be very enticing and capture people at the moment, but when people are alone, their logical reasoning comes back. That's when they realized how much the appeals have actually drawn them in. Also, I like all your personal examples; they're pretty entertaining to read :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you think about persuasive appeals. Btw, I always like reading your blogs because you make them interesting by adding extra facts and stories from your personal life!
ReplyDeleteWhile people want to believe that they are relatively unaffected by emotional appeal, there must be a reason that it is still used over logical appeal. It is interesting that you link impulse to emotional appeal. Perhaps we rely more on primary animalistic instincts more than we would like to admit to.
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