Monday, April 11, 2011
Appeal to Emotion
As stated in Chapter 10 of Epstein's text, "An appeal to emotion in an argument with a prescriptive conclusion can be good or not," and "An appeal to emotion with a descriptive conclusion is bad, if the appeal cannot be deleted as premise." There are many types of appeal to emotion such as the Appeal to Pity, Appeal to Fear, Appeal to Spite, and Appeal to Vanity. The one that caught my attention the most was Appeal to Fear, because it is often used by advertisers, politicians, etc. This type of appeal is used to manipulate people by using fear as the main factor. An example of this is that if there is an ad that says children at age 10 will develop a specific disease, there is a medicine that will prevent it from happening. However, this is only to "scare" people, specifically parents, in which they will eventually purchase the medicine. In my opinion, Appeal to Fear is very interesting, yet scary because a lot of people may not realize that the many things we buy are because of the ads or comments made by advertisers, politicians, and even marketers. I think everyone comes across Appeal to Fear every single day.
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You’re absolutely right about how politicians and advertisers use this type of appeal to get people to do what they want. They are good this. Appeal to fear is definitely one of the most used. Its true because a lot of people will get scared when they here that something bad will happen if they do not act in a certain way or buy a certain product. This appeal is very manipulative and sometimes deceptive. I also agree with you about how we run into these types of appeal everyday. It is all over TV, bulletin boards, and more. We just do not notice it very often but it is there.
ReplyDeleteI like your post. I found it interesting that appeal to fear caught your attention most. I guess when we live in a society where the news talks about politics all the time, it is possible to spot ads that appeal to fear- especially during election time. Although, appeal to pity was what struck me most, I can agree with you. Appeal to fear is common. I think I have seen these before, but maybe not all of them actually evoke fear in me. However, when I did my objective three, I did find an ad where it evoked fear.
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