In Yann Dall'Aglio’s Love —You're Doing It Wrong, Yann starts off his speech by referring to himself in his examples. Dall’Aglio states, “I can love jogging. I can love a book, a movie. I can love escalopes. I can love my wife.” These are all very basic statements but they are all statements that wouldn’t be hard for Dall’Aglio, or anyone else, to defend. This makes Dall’Aglio seem like a down-to-Earth man who could be very easily relatable to any one of his audience members, thus, he has already succeeded in enhancing his ethos and convincing his audience that he is someone worth listening to and someone worth being persuaded by. Toward the end of his speech, Dall’Aglio begins to discuss being “useless”. Dall’Aglio says, “Another path to thinking about love may be possible. . . . to renounce the hysterical need to be valued? . . . by becoming aware of my uselessness. Yes, I'm useless. But rest assured: so are you. We are all useless. This uselessness is easily demonstrated, because in order to be valued I need another to desire me, which shows that I do not have any value of my own.” Yann directly assesses self-worth for himself as well as his audience and tells everyone that they are essentially worthless. Ironically, attacking his audience actually strengthened his pathos. Yann’s message here is very broad and is directed at every human being whether they heard his speech or not - this global message allows for a sense of unity or belonging throughout the audience. Also, it is a message that sticks primarily because it is so unflattering - not something typically said by someone who wants you to agree with them. It is a bold move to debunk his audience but Dall’Aglio pulls it off well.
In Toni Morrison’s Strangers, Morrison developes and maintains her ethos from the very first word, “I”. Morrison’s essay opens up with her very own experience where she talks about her own emotions and reasons behind them. Her audience knows she is credible because she is sharing her very own truth. Morrison developes her ethos in her own story as well when describing her feelings of loss after not seeing the woman again. Morrison says, “I feel cheated, puzzled, but also amused…. I try to understand my chagrin, and why I am missing a woman I spoke to for fifteen minutes.” Toni’s emotions are very well portrayed through her words and share an experience most people can relate to in some way, making her emotional appeal strong and memorable.
In both readings, Toni Morrison, Strangers, and Yann Dall’Aglio, Love- You’re Doing it all Wrong, both authors major use emotion through the use of pathos. Pathos is not the only rhetorical strategy used but also ethos is found throughout both writings. In Toni Morrison’s essay, the use of emotional language is presented throughout the piece especially when she is talking about finding her lost piece. A quote to prove this is when she states that “She reminds me of someone, something (Morrison 135).” In this statement, Toni is simply talking about how someone new is bringing back memories of the past which is triggering her emotions thus using the strategy of pathos. In Dall’Aglio’s work, the everyday examples of life instances also use the emotional language. Yann quotes, “We can also imagine a chemical treatment for breakups that weakens the feeling of attachment (5:03).” He quotes this because everyday is a new day for a relationship and who knows what will come out of that day, but Yann says that we like to think of it as though it is chemically formulated. He also uses ethos which is logic and credibility behind giving the reader a new look on love. Altogether, both essays use multiple rhetorical strategies to get the main point across and it is seen throughout that pathos, the use of emotional language is the favorited rhetorical device throughout both papers.
ReplyDeleteIn both, the reading by Toni Morrison, Strangers, and in Yann Dall’Aglio’s speech, Love- You’re Doing It Wrong, they appeal to the reader’s emotions. Kincaid starts of his essay through his experience meeting a stranger whom he enjoyed speaking too. It seems like he was upset to no longer have seen or hear from this stranger. This leads to his point where he starts describing what you feel towards strangers, a common feeling we might all experience when meeting someone unknown/likable and then never seeing them again. In Dall’Aglio’s speech he speaks about love. He defines it as the desire of being desired. He later on appeals to our emotions through the comparison of loving food to loving his wife. We all know our food doesn’t love us back but we could imagine that his wife does. He uses a lot of humor to get his audiences attention like thinking of love by thinking of ourselves as useless. They are both appealing to our emotions of love.
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