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last.updated 9.11.05

 

Pathos

Purpose

The purpose of today's lesson and activity is to create of foundation for our understanding of pathos. We will do this by juxtaposing Aristotle's topics for a pathetic appeal with 20th century post-structural theories of pathos, as well as the practical implications of these theories. By the end of class, you should have a good sense of how a rhetor can be persuasive by focusing on the audience's emotions, needs, and values.

We will end class by collaboratively developing an outline for an essay about Knoeller's article "Driving Home at Midnight in a Dense Fog: Using Metaphor to Explore Writing Processes "

Background

Structuralism

  • believes that there is a structure upon which society, culture, and language are built; these structures can be unique to a given context
  • a study of understanding these systems
  • think hierarchies, catagories, taxonomies; in linguistics, structuralism is exemplified by the various studies of language, such as semiotics, phonemics

Post-structuralism

  • examines the connections between language and power
  • acknowledges that we are subject to language (subjected by language; subjects of language)
  • questions linguistic boundaries (e.g., Butler's gender theory)

Barthes

  • 1915-1980; France
  • faculty member of the College de France
  • prolific writer, but did not identify with any of his own theories
  • started his academic career as a structuralist, but moved towards post-structuralism by questioning authorial intent
  • wrote Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975) in which "the author is himself rendered as a text and subject to reading"
  • also did some work on visuals

Presentation

Michael, Jessica, and Erica

Discussion

Foucault's Author Function from "What is an Author?"

  • "discourses are objects of appropriation... In our culture (and doubtless many others), discourse was not originally a product, a thing, a kind of goods; it was essentially an act" (p. 108).
  • "does not affect all discourse in a universal and constant ways" (p. 109). For example, scientific texts of the Middle Ages never had to reference others to gain credibility.
  • "does not develop spontaneously as the attribution of a discourse to an individual... but rather by a series of specific and complex operations" (pp. 110, 113)
  • "it does not refer simply and purely to a real individual, since it can give rise simultaneously to several selves, to several subjects-positions that can be occupied by different classes of individuals" (p. 113)

Barthes's Death of the Author (1968)

  • what does Barthes mean by proclaiming that the author is dead?
  • as a society what does this perspective "buy us"? what does it take away?
    • how does this theory affect issues of copyright? plagiarism? reader response?
  • Barthes talks as if the movement that he describes has taken hold; almost forty years later what evidence do you see that it has or has not been adopted?

Activity

Using Christian Knoeller's article "Driving Home at Midnight in a Dense Fog: Using Metaphor to Explore Writing Processes" as a model of an academic source, we, as a class, will be composing an outline for an Analysis Paper that analyzes this text. As a class, we will work through the following:

  • determine what Knoeller's argument is and how he tries to be persuasive; develop a thesis based upon this determination
  • decide which rhetorical theories help you to describe how he is or is not being persuasive; the goal is to be cohesive, not exhaustive. Draw from the two theorists (Barthes, Aristotle); make sure you can distinguish how the rhetoricians you choose discuss the given topic.
  • develop an outline that proposes a way to approach this Analysis Paper. In this outline...
    • include your thesis and the ways you would develop this argument
    • reference quotes from Knoeller's article that you would use to illustrate your point; give enough of the quote that your audience would understand the point you are trying to make
    • reference quotes from the respective theorists' work that you would use to illustrate your point; give enough of the quote that your audience would understand the point you are trying to make
    • briefly describe the connections that you would make