Rhetorical-discursive perspectives for the study of patheticization

Abstract

Taking as a starting point some reflections on the pathetical dimension of discourse, this article focuses the discussion of the three rhetorical modes of persuasion — logos, pathos, and ethos — in an attempt to argue in defence of their integration, with contribution from the new rhetoric, sophistics and the semiolinguistic theory of discourse. Refusing the dichotomous perspective of the Cartesian paradigm, our main purpose is to draw attention to the need to reconfirm a relationship of interdependence between pathos and logos. To illustrate our proposal, after a theoretical exposition on the subject, we analyse excerpts from a journalistic chronicle in the hope of confirming the legitimacy of the subject under consideration and the need for more consistent debates and demonstrations. Once the categories of intergenericity and metaphor have been chosen as discursive structures representative of the logos, the analysis allows us to observe their deploymenting in the effects of patemization, considered here as meaning effects.