You need to understand how pathos works because people often play on your emotions, for better or

for worse, to persuade you to do something: to do a favor, to vote for a candidate, or to buy a product,
for example. Using pathos is not wrong, but people can often make better decisions on how to act when
they understand how others use values, beliefs, and emotions as persuasive techniques.

In addition, writers can learn to use pathos to make their writing more gripping. How can a writer add
pathos to his or her compositions?

One way is to write descriptively. Description, when discussing rhetoric, is not the same as explaining.
Description is writing about what can be experienced with the five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch,
and smell. The human brain is impressed with sensory details, so writing about what can be observed
with the five senses can make a connection between your writing and the reader's emotions.

Because people learn through their senses, descriptive writing can be a powerful tool to communicate
ideas. If I write about the smell of a freshly baked pumpkin pie, and if you have ever smelled it, you will
remember and relate. I might also write about a purple velvet fish lying on a bank of snow. Although you
may have never seen such a sight, you can still relate because you have seen the color purple and the
shape of a fish many times. You have touched a piece of velvet cloth and felt snow. Thus, the picture
that I had in my mind as I wrote that descriptive sentence is likely to be similar to the one that you
imagined as you read it. Good description works effectively in most writing because it bridges the gap
between writer and reader.

Some descriptive writing is objective, meaning that its main purpose is to report events rather than to
create an emotion. For instance, lab reports are often objective descriptions. They explain what the
researcher has observed without recording the feeling of joy or disappointment related to the findings.

Most descriptive writing, however, is supposed to convey a certain feeling, either positive or negative.
We call descriptive writing that communicates a certain feeling subjective. This writing is also based on
observation, but the purpose is to communicate the writer's attitude about the topic. The subjective
description's purpose is often persuasive. For instance, if a writer were putting together a brochure
advertising a vacation resort, he or she would likely describe the condos, the beach, and the food with
sensory details so a way that the reader may be persuaded to book a weekend getaway. The writer
would include only those details that show the resort in a positive light, describing the palm trees and
ocean vistas rather than the overcrowded parking lot. He or she would also choose words that convey
an upscale vacation attitude: cuisine rather than food and club rather than bar, for example. The
particular attitude that subjective descriptive writing conveys is called the dominant impression, and in
subjective descriptive writing, all of the details should work together to create that attitude.

As you gather ideas for writing your rhetorical analysis of the commercial, you may want to discuss how
the commercial plays on your emotions by entertaining your five senses. Of course, you won't be able to
smell, taste, or touch the images, but you are able to see and hear them.

If you have not already chosen a commercial to analyze, do so as quickly as possible. Then, make your
list of criteria that make an advertisement effective. Before drafting the essay, however, you might
want to watch the commercial again, paying particular attention to what you see and hear. What
emotions do you feel when you see certain images? Are these the emotions that the makers of the
commercial hope you feel? What sounds do you hear? Are those sounds designed to make you feel a
certain way? Do they work? Jot down your answers on the scratch paper so that you remember these
ideas. They may help you determine whether the pathos of the commercial is effective or not.

To write a successful rhetorical analysis, you should also consider what an analysis is. Just as a
description is not just any explanation, but a particular type (a recording of what can be experienced
with the five senses), an analysis is not just any explanation. Analysis is an explanation that works by
breaking the subject down into its parts and examining each one.

If a piece of rhetoric is broken into its logical parts for examination, then the result is a rhetorical
analysis.

I didn't learn how to play golf until I was an adult. I wanted to be able to go out with my friends and play
a weekly round for social reasons, and I wanted to avoid disgracing myself by not knowing the basics of
the game. So before the grass greened up in the spring, I took lessons. My golf teacher was patient and
wise. He did not try to make me a professional golfer in one lesson. Instead, he broke the concept of golf
up into parts. First, he covered the rules of the game. Then he explained the grip, the stance, and the
swing. Next, we worked on driving, chipping, and putting. Each lesson covered one aspect of the game,
and when we were through, I was no golf master, but I could enjoy a fun evening on the course with my
friends. Because my teacher broke the game of golf into its logical components and covered each one,
he analyzed golf for me so that I could understand and play it. In this lesson, you will be using analysis to
help your reader better understand an ideain this case, how your commercial works.

The purpose of analysis is usually expository, which means writing designed to inform the reader.
Because most concepts that adult readers want to learn are complicated, they are best understood if
the writer breaks the topic into smaller pieces and covers each piece one at a time. Then, the concept
may be synthesized, which means put back together to show how the parts work together. My golf
teacher analyzed the game of golf for me to make it easier for me to learn, and then he synthesized it by
asking me to play a few holes of golf so that I could put each skill into practice with the other skills I had
learned.

When you write your analysis of the commercial, however, your purpose will be evaluative as well as
informative because your main point is to tell whether or not the commercial is effective. When you
evaluate, you are persuading the audience that the subject is worthwhile or not. The analysis will back
up that debatable point by making your opinion believable to your reader.

The same analysis and synthesis processes that my golf instructor used are common in college-level
expository writing. For example, if you have ever been asked to list the parts of a cell on a biology test or
to explain the components in a computer's processing unit in a paper for a computer class, you were
writing an analysis. If you wrote about how the parts of a cell or a computer work together to allow it to
function, then you were writing a synthesis. Analysis and synthesis often appear together in academic
writing.

In addition to synthesis, analysis often is used together with classification, which explains a concept by
putting it in a category. For instance, the governments of the world can be classified as kingdoms,
republics, theocracies, dictatorships, and socialist and communist states. If you were to explain the
government of the United States by categorizing it as a republic, then you would be writing in the
classification mode. Then, you might add more information by analyzing the U. S. government into its
three branches: judicial, legislative, and executive. Thus, classification and analysis work together to
inform the reader.

In a way, this Composition 1 course is like my golf lessons. Both use analysis. Just as golf is too complex
to be understood without breaking it down, good writing cannot be studied as all one piece. That is why
we study the appealsethos, pathos, kairos, and logos. The idea is that if you understand each
individual part of rhetoric, you will be able to put them together to express yourself in the manner most
appropriate for your college classes and for your professional life after that.