Public Discourse

Public discourse requires a certain balance between pathos, ethos and logos. But in our current form of public discourse is pathos being used more than it should, is the balance becoming unbalanced? Some might say yes, I say it depends. It depends on your perspective. Currently it takes a lot to get people’s attention and weighting a message heavily with pathetic appeals creates something that is hard for people to ignore. Sometimes it is necessary for us to use a strong appeal towards emotion in order to get our point across.

It seems to be necessary to use a strong emotional appeal in order to send a message but should it be necessary? I believe that, in public discourse, pathos, ethos and logos, should remain in balance regardless of what grabs people’s attention. Especially in politics because when politicians use heavy emotional appeals and less logic and ethics we, as an audience, miss out on important information because politicians are only telling us stuff that appeals to our emotions and they are not telling us the whole story. It can be deceiving and honesty is something that we look for in politicians.

I think currently, pathetic appeals are too prevalent in our public discourse, it is often hard to wade through fact and fiction and playing off our emotions makes it even harder. It is too easy to use pathetic appeals to pad your messages, whether it be in politics or something else and I don’t think that is a legitimate reason for its use. When we can successfully fix the balance between pathos, ethos and logos public discourse can truly be effective.