Rhetoric 101
This rhetorical appeal focuses on the emotions an audience experiences.
Pathos
According to Karen Thompson Walker, fear has a close relationship with this human ability—the ability to picture possible futures.
Imagination
Haunted houses, abandoned buildings, remote cabins, darkness, and ominous objects are examples of this term for signs commonly associated with a genre.
Iconography
Communism, nuclear war, and conformity were major societal fears associated with this decade.
1950s
This citation style is used primarily in the liberal arts and humanities.
MLA
Statistics, established facts, research, and logical connections are all ways a writer can employ this appeal.
Logos
Walker compares our fears to this form of storytelling because both contain characters, plots, suspense, and possible outcomes.
Stories
In horror films, this type of shot can make a victim appear small, exposed, and vulnerable.
High-Angle Shot
Serial killers, urban crime, cults, and economic decline characterized the fears of this decade, with Jaws and Son of Sam coverage reflecting the period.
1970s
In MLA, when a source has three or more authors, the first author's name is normally followed by this abbreviation.
et al.
A horror movie uses a respected scientist to explain why a mysterious creature poses a genuine threat. The scientist primarily helps establish this rhetorical appeal.
Ethos
In Walker's central historical example, the crew of this whaleship faced frightening choices after their ship was attacked.
The Essex
The strong contrast between light and dark used to create anxiety and obscure what might be hiding in the shadows is known as this technique.
Chiascurro
Stranger danger, drugs, AIDS, Satanic Panic, and nuclear war were connected to this decade's broader phenomenon of moral panic.
1980s
You realize that your essay's third body paragraph doesn't actually support your thesis, so you rewrite and reorganize it. You are primarily doing this—not proofreading.
Revising
Author/writer, audience, purpose, text/topic, and setting/context are the five basic considerations used to identify this.
Rhetorical Situation
Aristotle's theory that scary stories can allow audiences to release or purge negative emotions is known by this term.
Catharsis
Strange event → investigation → accumulating evidence → increasingly believable threat. In our rhetorical analysis of horror, this sequence primarily demonstrates this appeal.
Logos
After 9/11, fears involving terrorism, anthrax, war, and surveillance created a rhetorical conflict between these two competing values.
Security and Freedom
You're checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other errors after you've already revised and edited the content of your essay. You have reached this stage.
Proofreading
A public-service announcement about AI-generated misinformation becomes especially persuasive immediately after a widely publicized deepfake incident. This appeal explains why when the message appears matters.
Kairos
A person refuses to fly because they vividly imagine a plane crash but happily drives several hours instead. Walker would encourage the person to examine not only how vivid each fear-story is, but this characteristic: how likely the feared outcome actually is.
Probability/Likelihood
Steve Neale argues that audiences enjoy genre partly because familiar conventions return while filmmakers change them. His phrase for this principle is these three words.
Repetition and Difference
Pandemic fears, AI, deepfakes, political violence, climate disasters, war, and economic instability characterize the 2020s. Your generational-fear chart connects these anxieties to this rhetorical/media problem.
Information Overload
Your professor writes, “Your thesis isn't clear and the organization needs to be reconsidered.” These are this type of comments because they address larger issues rather than individual sentences.
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