The Power of Emotions

 

www.blacktopcomedy.com

Emotions can be extremely hard to separate from facts when you are debating an issue, especially when it is close to your heart. I know when I debate something I'm passionate about, I always end up letting emotions control my argument. Often times when I do this, my comments end up being exaggerated just to help my chances of winning an argument. During junior year, my history class had to do a debate on capitalism. I had never really cared one way or the other before this debate, but because I wanted my side to win, I ended up exaggerated some of my facts and playing on their emotions of fear that the economy would fall apart without capitalism.

This is the problem we are facing in civil discourse these days. Too many people are relying on emotions, like fear and anger, to rally people to their cause. They are ignoring or stretching facts to win their argument. It is not an entirely bad thing to feel passionate about something, but it can become bad if you let emotions cloud over facts. Emotions should aid in civil discourse, not hinder it.

As seen in my Atlantic article where ignorance too often wins over reality, emotion can undermine an argument. When a commentator resorts to fear, like "All parents should forbid their daughters from going to fraternities when they go to college because all frat boys will sexually assault them," is ignoring that reality that a very small percentage of fraternity boys actually do that, but simply relying on the emotion of fear to persuade. Their generalizations completely sabotage their argument because they sound unintelligent. They also do not come across as credible because it is apparent they will go to extreme distortions to get their across. However, emotion can support the values of the writer, but unfortunately their values are ignored due to their blind emotion.

    What part do you think emotions should play in civil discourse?

Business Brands and How They Affect Who Buys

http://www.forbes.com/sites/datafreaks/2015/03/12/brands-take-a-stand-when-speaking-up-about-controversial-issues-hurts-or-helps-business/

     I read an interesting article on Forbes that described how the way a company takes a stance on an issue has affects on who shops there.  For example, if the CEO says s/he is against gun control, but you are for it, you feel less inclined to shop there.  I am fascinated by this because I am a business major and I, especially, want to focus on marketing.
    Do brands affect where you buy?

People Who Post Comments

 

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/24/banners-targeting-freshmen-women-near-old-dominion-spark-outrage/ 

   People who write comments on articles, like The Atlantic's Crass Frat Boys at Old Dominion, have way too much time on their hands.  It starts out harmless opinionated comments, but quickly turns into heated, ignorant debates.  People are almost purposefully insult the other person individual tangents that have little to do with the original article.
    Commenters are not afraid of insulting or being rude to the other person, after all they are anonymous.  They are afraid of being wrong.  They will go to exaggeration or plain lies just to avoid being wrong.  However, there are still some who feel strongly about the issue and want to share their opinion with readers, so hopefully the readers will come to agree with them.
    The commenters who actually had an intelligent case were the ones who gave song evidence and who did belittle those who disagreed with them.  They gave personal stories and pointed out facts, like in this case, the First Amendment's right to free speech.
    Then there were those who just hurled insults at each other and sounded ignorant.  They had little credibility because there comments were so outrageous and exaggerated.  They were just arguing to argue.  They only had emotion and no concrete facts to back their assertions.
    Comments do tend to persuade me one way or the other because, especially with this article, they brought up new pieces to the story.  Because comments come from both sides, it is much easier to see all sides of the argument.  It allows you to look at an argument from so many different sides with people of so many different views.
    Do you find these banners funny or crude?

The Difference Between Employer, Date, and Roommate

 

speakology101.com

The words employer, date, and roommate rarely overlap in a conversation.  They are not seen as synonyms or even words that would elicit the same descriptions.  When you are looking for a job, you want to use words that will make you appear worthy of a job, so words like responsible, hard-working, and intuitive came to mind and were easy to decipher from the date and, even, the roommate descriptions. With a date, you want to go more the route of romantic and fun, so words like adventurous, loving, and caring were easily separated from serious employee and organized roommate. A roommate is someone you have to live with, so words like reliable, organized, and easy going come to mind and our group was able to separate roommate descriptions form the other two because it was a combination of responsible employee and fun date.  

  I had rarely analyzed rhetorical situations before except in past English classes, but our class only spent a day or two on it. However, it did play a role in my life the other day. My friends and I were in the rec room and we were talking about movies and debating the better place to watch them-movie theaters or at home. I took the side of movie theaters, one of my friends took the side of home, but the other two were undecided. I backed up my argument with personal experience such as at home you get too distracted to watch the actual movie and it's more exciting to see it in theaters. I wanted them to agree with me, so we could go out to see a movie this weekend instead of staying in the dorm to watch one on the couch. They listened and agreed with me that movie theaters are a better place to watch movies because they agreed with my reasoning.

  How often do use rhetorical situations in your life?