Emotional Fallacies in Public Discourse: A Proposed Perspective for Research

الهادي, طاهر

doi:10.21608/mjoms.2021.167507

Emotional Fallacies in Public Discourse: A Proposed Perspective for Research

نوع المستند : البحوث والدِّراسات.

المؤلف

طاهر الهادي

عميد المعهد العالي للغات - السادس من أکتوبر

10.21608/mjoms.2021.167507

المستخلص

It is widely believed that “emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions”, emotionalists can, then, consume others and be consumed by others to take action and reach specific conclusions (even if they were unsound). Pathos – for example - as a communication technique is used for persuading the public to have belief in a certain idea or take a specific action by appealing to their prejudices and by repeating and intensifying the words and phrases that can trigger their emotions towards that idea or that action. Such a technique may lead to get the public confused between what is and what should be. This is what is termed the fallacy of shoulds which targets influencing the public, positively or negatively, regardless appealing to logic or looking for the truth. Managing emotions is considered a big challenge particularly because fallacies, are intentionally committed in daily public discourse whoever its parties are, departing from emotions are powerful forces for influencing others.
This is why the author believes that “emotional fallacies” is an issue that needs to be thoroughly and deeply explored. Therefore, this current paper tackles five main domains: public discourse, a quick view on logical fallacies, emotional fallacies overview, reasons behind emotional fallacies, and a proposed perspective for analyzing emotional fallacies.

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