Appealing to Emotions

Simply put, when we appeal to pathos, we appeal to our readers' emotions: anger/calm, love/hate, fear/confidence, shameless/remorse, compassion/indifference, pity/indignation, envy/emulation, joy/despair, guilt/innocence, panic/calm, and so on.

Most modern books on writing undervalue any emotional appeal, but we can't deny that we use emotional appeals all the time, from advertisements, locker room pep talks, and scholarship applications to presidential campaigns, military conflicts, and social movements. How many of us have changed our behavior because someone made us feel guilty? How many times have we helped someone because we were feeling happy? We can't deny its power, so why not use it to persuade others?

We use emotion to create a bond with our audience. We establish points of connection by encouraging our readers to feel what we feel, to identify with our emotions. If we can get them to feel the same way as we do, then they are prepared to act and believe the same way as us.

Honorific and Pejorative Language

I bring pathos or emotional appeal up now because the way you describe people, places, and things can affect your audience emotionally. For example, Honorific language refers to descriptive language that praises, celebrates, or honors a person, place, thing, or action while pejorative language disparages, critiques, or undermines a person, place, thing, or action. Your language shapes the way your audience perceives what you describe.

For example, "The damp classroom was filled with grimy chairs as the bulbous and slow-witted custodian stepped slowly into the poorly-lit room." Or,  "The stud walked up to the beached whale who was wearing a bikini that was too small for her." Words for missiles like "peacekeeper" or "patriot" as well as "surgical bombing" have an emotional effect, and we see the emotional effect in words for dying, as in "passed away, croaked, bought the farm, met her maker, became compost/ fertilizer," etc.  How about words for sex? Or consider the emotional impact in the words "ambitious," or "aggressive," or "pushy," all words that could describe the exact same behavior.