Emotional VS Logical Appeals

·         LESSON SUMMARY

Writers often appeal to your emotions to try to persuade you of something. But unless they also provide logical evidence to back up their claims, you have no reason to accept their argument as valid. This lesson helps you see how to distinguish between appeals to your emotions and appeals to your sense of reason.

·         The Difference between Logical and Emotional Appeals

When writers want to convince people of something or influence them to think a certain way, they generally rely on two means of persuasion: appealing to the reader’s sense of logic and appealing to the reader’s emotions. It is important to be able to distinguish between these two types of appeal because when writers rely only on appeals to emotion, they neglect to provide any real evidence for why you should believe what they say. Writers who rely solely on emotional appeals usually hope to get their readers so angry, scared, or excited that they will forget to look for reason or sense in the argument.

Unfortunately, many readers aren’t aware of this strategy, so they may accept arguments that are unfounded, manipulative, or both. Political leaders who use the emotional strategy in speaking to crowds are called demagogues. Calling a leader a demagogue is no compliment since it means that he or she relies on prejudice and passion rather than clear thinking to persuade people of his or her position. Sound reasoning requires that you are able to look beyond emotional appeals to determine if there is any logic behind them.

Logical     : According to reason; according to conclusions drawn from evidence or good common sense

Emotional: Relating to emotions; arousing or exhibiting strong emotion

While it is true that an appeal to emotions can help strengthen an argument based in logic, an argument cannot be valid if it is based solely on emotional

appeal.

·         Are the Appeals Logical?

The next step is to see if these reasons are logical. Does the author come to these conclusions based on reason, evidence, or common sense? If you look carefully, you will see that the answer is no. Each of the writer’s arguments is based purely on emotion without any logic to support it.

Whether you agree with the author, you can see that this is a much more effective argument because the writer uses logic and common sense in backing up what he has to say.

·         Summary

Looking for appeals to logic will make you a more criticalreader and thinker. And once you learn  to read between the lines in an argument (to look behind emotional appeals for some sort of logical support), you’ll have more confidence as a reader and be a better judge of the arguments that you hear and read.

TIP:

·      Certain words are sometimes used to communicate or reinforce bias, a person's individual opinion or interpretation of something. Biased words often illustrate the writer's emotions, and can also trigger emotions in a reader. Biased words are not rooted in fact. Instead, they convey judgment and personal belief. Here are some words that demonstrate bias:

• best
• favorite
• horrible
• awful
• mailman (this word is gender-biased, as it pertains only to the male sex)
• strange
• smart
• stupid

NB: Tugas Reading Comprehension

Sumber: Reading_Comprehension_Success_3rd_Edition%5B1%5D.pdf