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Writers manipulate words into persuasive arguments, tear-jerking novels, abstract poetry, alluring performances and yet still, true experience trumps all recreations. The enormity of experience cannot be captured by language, at least if it can, I have yet to experience it. I believe more in the cliché that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but even a thousand pictures (or a video) lack the ability to capture the excitement, serenity or overwhelming enormity of a moment. I do not possess the creative writing skill or the emotional capacity to transform my experiences from brain to paper, music, speech or any other communicative forms. A re-enactment is the only way for someone else to experience the same experience, yet they do not have the same history so cannot understand the full experience that the writer tried to share. How does the writer know how to capture the reader’s interest and emotions to help their attempt (pathos!) at a recreation of an important meaning to them. Real-life experience, in person, clashes no many sensations together that the writer may not even notice all the factors contributing to the experience, or notice how much each of those factors changes the overall feeling of the moment. I for one would be disappointed if writing was an easy way to share experience because then even less people would go out and have those experiences for themselves. Experience crucially impacts life by its tendency to make people crave more and more places and feelings, contributing to the quality of life for those who seek to experience all that life has to offer. To gain so much experience just by reading about it makes it unnecessary to live in the real world; it would be too similar to virtual reality, false experience, leading to boredom with everyday incidents because extraordinary ones would be available by a click or by opening a book. If that were possible, experiences would mean less, ergo it is essential that experience stays genuine.

To almost everyone, the public discourse is more or less pathetic, at various levels. But how much is “too much”? If we define the “too” as the extent to which it does more harm than good, I certainly do not think the public discourse is too pathetic.

Personally, I think being pathetic is absolutely necessary in today’s mass media, because that is the way to interact with audience. Recall every little detail of our life, commercials, political agitations or public good, the force that motivates us to donate for the victims to vote for a particular candidate is the messages/information delivered that resonate with our emotion, that we can identify with. It might sound ridiculous, but if we think about it, no matter how perfect the logic is or how well the argument is structured, it all has to come down to emotion if you are counting on the audience to interact and respond.

There are certainly a lot of pathetic fallacies that are designed to trap audience’s emotion and people do fall into those emotional pitfalls. I personally do not see any problem in it. It does not mean that being blindly emotional is always a sensible thing to do, but it might often be the most effective way, although some logical understanding will be a plus. In my opinion, emotion usually beats reasoning in many aspects of our life. People buy insurance not because of the propagandas that promote retirement planning but the emotional discourse that says “ give your family the future protection”; we donate to the tornado victims not because the sensible reasoning that we have the civic duty to do so (in fact, we don’t) but we feel sorry about the tragedy and would want to help as if the other people would help us under the same situations. Yes, some of them might be misleading, but in general it does more good than harm on public affairs. Therefore, the public discourse is never too pathetic.

When making a point, using emotion is a temping way to try and persuade the audience. Playing with people's fears, wants, and past experiences is an easy way to convince an audience of things that they may not truly believe or that are really true. In politics or any public discourse, the use, and abuse of pathos, are common. The question for this assignment is to examine if pathos plays to much of a role in public discourse. In my opinion, it is a necessary evil in our discourse. With the rush-rush world we live in, most people do not have the time to stop and think about politics and their opinions on larger decisions. By using emotional appeals, journalist and television personalities get people involved in issues they would normally not. Even though the tactics they use skew and distort their opinions, the audience will eventually come to their own conclusions. In my opinion, the pathos used in public discourse is necessary so that people stay interested in the topics they discuss.

Is our public discourse too pathetic right now? As I sat and began to collect my thoughts regarding this question and form of rhetoric, I realized I needed to first address the nature of the pathetic argument/appeal itself first. Of the three points of the rhetoric triangle I find the pathetic approach to be the one people are most easily influenced by, but at the same time is the most malicious. When an audience’s emotions are played off of they can really be convinced of anything, whether or not it is logical. I say the pathetic argument is the most malicious in that it can be made and convince without being logical—it manipulates. Over time I have developed this very pessimistic outlook on the pathetic argument because I have fallen victim to it so many times, many of those times without even realizing it.
The most common headlines I see plaguing public discourse these days are usually, “IT’S OVER”, “THE OTHER WOMAN’S STORY”, or “FINALLY GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED” in bold letters. I realize that the reason people pick up and buy these magazines, papers, or tune into the T.V. and listen is because understanding them does not require any prior knowledge or a logical understanding, all you need is to be human and have emotions of any kind. We can easily understand the way in which people feel and establish our own feelings towards something. Anyone can understand the basic story without requiring any knowledge or logic, just an emotional understanding. My opinion is that yes, our public discourse is very pathetic but because it needs to be. Newspapers, tabloids, speeches, any form of discourse need to have pathetic appeal to some nature, otherwise the greater audience may feel excluded and not understand. It is the pathetic nature of these headlines that catches the audience’s attention at first, not necessarily the thought provoking or logical statement. We can all relate to this pathetic headline and understand it because we are human. It’s simple; if a magazine wants to sell and have a greater audience, it needs to have pathetic appeal.
What I do see happening though is discourse relying too heavily on this pathetic appeal in order to sell, and in turn loosing its logical and ethical nature. As I said before the pathetic appeal is malicious in that it is so manipulating, and with less and less logic and ethics in discourse, we are loosing sight of what we should be reading, as well as what’s right and balanced. For the most part our public discourse has fallen victim to a reliance on pathetic appeal and begun to lack consideration for the balance needed between all three points of rhetoric.

After reading the article, Easy = True, my only response is duh. Why wouldn't people tend to choice the things that they are familiar with or think is easier? When you have to follow directions and the directions are harder read, the task is going to seem harder to complete. When your presented with something multiple times you are going to prefer it. I am an Engineering Major, if I am shown how to do a problem one time and get confronted with a similar problem, I am going to solve it the same way as the previous problem because I am familiar with it even if there is a much simpler way. Why, because I know it is reliable. The main thing I got out of this article is that if I want to make a point in my writing, I should make it easy to understand and relate it to something people are familiar with. I do not like how this article makes this idea seem so ground breaking a new. People like what is easier and people like what they are familiar with, this isn't rocket science.

No, I do not know what you're "sayin'" when when you ask me questions or use phrases or words that do not make sense.
"Whats good?"
First of all, what would be an answer to this question, "everything", "nothing", am I supposed to explain each factor that is good or bad in my life? My answer would most likely be "huh?". I now know that "Whats good?" means "Whats up?" from the one who asked the question, which also does not make sense. If someone wants to know how I am, they could ask "How are you?" or "What are you doing?" instead of asking nonsensical questions.
"Where you at?"
"Where are you?" would be an easier question to understand and answer, but Boost mobile ads promoted this phrase and now it is too commonly heard among phone conversations and in text messages.
"supposed" v. "suppose" and "used" v. "use"
I know that many people drop the 'd' at the end of used and supposed because of the following 't' sound, but I cannot help how much this bothers me
"lol", "nm", "omg", and other instant/text message shorthand
Messaging phrases are useful when actually messaging, but when they are used in face-to-face conversations it crosses the line.

And although nonsensical phrases and words bother me, I cannot disagree that when used correctly, they can add to the musicality or coloration of the words. So although, I may know "what you're sayin'", it still annoys me.

To begin with, I have to give credits to the title of the article. As far as the content concerns, the title does demonstrate how a simple and catchy phrase like itself tends to convince the readers. I do agree with what Drake Bennett suggested in the research to a certain extent, but I think we do need to consider the context to approve the theory.

I feel that the article fell into the fallacy of equivocation when it went back and forth between “easy” and “familiar” among different research. It is true that we tend to believe in the things that we are familiar with. It is not uncommon to buy things that we have heard of when we choose products. We behave so not for the sake of our appreciation to familiarity, but in the situations that require information to make decision, familiarity implies information to a certain extent. However, easiness might be part of the correlation, or might not. In certain context, short and catchy phrases are easy for us to remember and grow familiarity; in other occasions, a little complexity would be appreciated to make an impression. The most straightforward example is the fashion trend. There are times when fanciful colored dress that would catch attention and there are days when simple white shirts appear to be cool, depending on what the rest of the people wear on the street wear. So instead of saying easiness leads to memory retention and leads us to do things, it seems to me more accurate to conclude that people tend to remember things that are different from the rest, no matter it is easier or more complicated.

The point of “disfluency” is an interesting one. If you think about it, those simple terms that are easy to remember are also easy to forget. Just think about our names. Often times, we are concerned about complicated names that would give people a hard time to remember, but once people get it, it is hard to forget. Use the example of one of our classmates, Adan (hope you don’t mind), it is an easy-pronounce-name, so it is easy to remember; at the same time, it also requires a little processing to notice the “n” instead of “m” as the usual “ Adam” is, and that is what makes it hard to forget. If the advertisers are really looking to make a quick impression and also interest the audience, I think that is the strategy it should approach—easy but different, a combination of fluency and disfluency.