Uses and Misuses of Emotional Appeal

The term emotional appeal is sometimes used in rhetoric textbooks with a negative connotation, as a form of fallacy, but that is misleading. Emotional appeal is by no means always, or even usually, incompatible with logical reasoning in argumentation. Whether a war is right or wrong, in America or in other countries, governments resort to the same emotional appeals and propagandistic rhetoric, as indicated by the quotation from Hermann Goering describing Hitler&s;s incitement of the Germans to war. Emotional appeals in support of every war are keyed to sympathy for the members of our military forces, and they are frequently shown in interviews voicing their belief in the justice of the cause for which they have been called to fight. Moreover, soldiers and their families almost inevitably have an overwhelming emotional need to believe that the cause for which they are killing and dying is just.