Saturday, April 17, 2010

Appeal to Emotion: Fear

Out of all the appeals to emotion I found that appealing to fear was the most interesting. I found that mostly politicians and advertisers use this type of appeal to manipulate people into buying the proposed product or to vote a certain way. Also it is used in everyday life such as driving and in making other critical life decisions.

An example of an appeal to emotion would be like Someone telling someone they should not drive fast in the snow or bad weather. The other person might ask why not but then the first person just has to throw in the other person's life. The second person then starts taking in and thinking of the damage it could cause if they crashed or something else serious had happened. This is a good argument because the first person uses the appeal to emotion in a good and appropriate way so that the second person is not scared into making a bad decision.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Navy Seals=Patriotism

We see an appeal to patriotism on a daily basis, from the marine corp advertisements on the television, to the old fashioned “I want you!” advertisements with Uncle Sam pointing down at the unsuspecting boy/girl. The most appealing advertisements to society in the present years have been the marine corp, army, and navy commercials and advertisements in magazines. An example of this ever so loving appeal to patriotism would be this:

Your watching television and it goes to commercial time. The screen becomes dark, with different shades of black and blue. You see the moon shining brightly and hear and see waves gently crashing into the shore of a beach. Everything seems so serene and calm as clouds slowly move across the moon. The screen becomes completely black for a couple seconds and the the sight of the ocean and the moon come back into view, only now there are footprints in the wet sand. The water comes up and washes the footprints away as if no one was even there and the website for the navy seals is displayed in the middle of the screen as the commercial comes to a close.

The underlying argument is that if you become a navy seal, you will become as stealthy and quiet as they men were in the commercial. This happens to be a very good argument (even though it wasn't said) because of the impact it has on the American heart. This advertisement especially appeals to younger boys and men in high school because they are still figuring out what they want to do and are always wanting to show their “tough side”.