Language Arts & Disciplines Rhetoric
Appeal to Pity
Argumentum ad Misericordiam
- Publisher
- State University of New York Press
- Initial publish date
- May 1997
- Category
- Rhetoric
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780791434628
- Publish Date
- May 1997
- List Price
- $45.95
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Description
A useful contribution to theories of argumentation and public address criticism, this book uses a pragmatic approach to understanding conversation as a way of elucidating the use of appeals to pity and sympathy.
Appeal to pity has frequently been exploited with amazing success as a deceptive tactic of argumentation, so much so that it has traditionally been treated as a fallacy. Using a case study method, the author examines examples of appeals to pity and compassion in real arguments in order to classify, analyze, and evaluate the types of arguments used in these appeals. Among the cases studied are the controversial use of "poster kids" in the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy and the "baby incubators story" deployed by a public relations firm to influence the decision to send U.S. forces into Kuwait during the Gulf War. In addition to the analyses of these and other case studies, this book provides, for the first time, precise guidelines and useful criteria with which to identify, analyze, and evaluate instances of the ad misericordiam argument.
About the author
Douglas N. Walton is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg. He has published two books with Penn State Press, The Place of Emotion in Argument (1992) and Arguments from Ignorance (1995). Other recent books of his include Slippery Slope Arguments (1992) and Plausible Arguments in Everyday Conversation (1992).
Editorial Reviews
"Careful analyses are given of empathy, compassion, sympathy, and pity, and the differences between these. These analyses are useful for understanding the emotions, quite apart from an investigation of features of arguments. The analyses make it possible to distinguish arguments which contain an appeal to compassion from those containing an appeal to sympathy, and to further distinguish both of these appeals from the appeal to pity. Walton's discussion provides a sensitive and profound evaluation of arguments which occur frequently in daily life, but which are given only a superficial treatment in most texts." — John Kearns, State University of New York at Buffalo
Other titles by
Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation
Legal Argumentation and Evidence
One-Sided Arguments
A Dialectical Analysis of Bias
Appeal to Popular Opinion
The New Dialectic
Conversational Contexts of Argument
Appeal to Expert Opinion
Arguments from Authority
Argument Structure
A Pragmatic Theory
Argument Structure
A Pragmatic Theory
Arguments from Ignorance
Commitment in Dialogue
Basic Concepts of Interpersonal Reasoning