Meaning of pathotic | Babel Free

Definitions

Being of an argumentative style directed to elicit pathos in the audience.

Examples

“All the discussed proposals seem to be based on the collection and ordering of a list of different criteria that a story told in an argumentative discourse should fulfil in order to be credible and accepted as evidence of some sort. If we sum up and try to arrange what we have so far seen, starting from the most inner (intra-diegetic) to outer (extra-diegetic) criteria, we have a much more complicated framework than the dyadic theory we started with and which referred to roughly numbers 1 and 9 on our list, equivalents of which are mentioned by practically all authors: […] 8. Audience-related, “pathotic” assessment: previous beliefs of audience. Relative to argumentative practice involved (Cicero).”

“The modes of argumentation which work through persuasion are ethotic and pathotic with former being act of persuading an “audience through the character of the arguer wherein someone of good character, expertise or experiential knowledge is seen as standing a good chance of convincing an audience” (Richardson 2007: 159). The second mode of persuasion uses a pathotic argument which uses emotion implicitly or explicitly as a persuasive tool. Richardson (2007: 160) adds that “pathotic arguments can anger people, instil in them fear, pity or even calm them down”.”

“We observe how speakers appeal to emotions in two ways: first, by using pathotic Argument Schemes [for example Fear Appeal, as described by Walton (2013)], second, by using emotion-eliciting language [for example words such as “war” or “children”, see Wierzba et al. (2021)].”

CEFR level