Rhetoric for Interaction - Analysis of Pathos

  • “rhetoric can be defined as guidelines to construct effective communication. It can also be seen as a means to provide the audience with motivation for adopting a new attitude or taking a new course of action. It is a tool for achieving goals, generating responses.”
  • websites often have persuasive intent
  • study of verbal rhetoric since Ancient Greece, study of visual rhetoric since mid-20th century, rhetoric of interaction the new form
  • using a classical principle from the Aristotelian study of discourse: the rhetorical appeal of pathos
  • ethos, logos, pathos
  • rhetorical possibilities of interactive tech appealing to visitors emotions
  • “Rhetoric is a dynamic, polysemic term, of which implications vary with time and author”
  • Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the faculty of observing […] the available means of persuasion”
  • Barthes identifies six sides of rhetoric:
    1. a technique: “an art of persuasion, body of rules and recipes whose implementation makes it possible to convince the hearer of the discourse”/reader of the work
    2. a teaching: rhetoric as introduced into institutions of learning
    3. a science: “a field of observation and classification of language phenomena”
    4. an ethic: “a group of rules with a practical goal and moral code”
    5. a social practice: “a power that allows privileged classes to hold ownership of speech”
    6. a ludic practice, a “black rhetoric” - “games, parodies, erotic or obscene allusions”
  • “the difference between dialectic and rhetoric discourses [is that] the former looks for rationally accepted conclusions, while the latter [obtains] not only rational agreement, but also emotional adherence from the audience”
  • “articulates its own rhetorical syllogisms—the enthymemes”
  • rhetoric’s proofs are provided by ethos, logos and pathos, provoking decisions based on emotional argument
  • less degree of certainty than logical syllogisms
  • connection only through passively in taking or interacting. Visitors become participants
  • an active experience, being an active part of the process
  • “The mere pres‐

ence of interactive features indicates a disposition to transfer some control to the visitor, which may contribute to an overall friendliness.”

  • “how much control the visitors are convinced to have” - so not inherently how much control they have but how much they feel their input affects the output
  • “a website can go from resembling a document to be read, to simulating a space to be explored, something to be experienced”
  • “Immersive websites bring visitors into the action, the narrative, or the message”
  • third or first POV
  • what is second person in game/interactive media?
  • “the use of the term function, rather than purpose, in order to dissociate the judgment from any possible intention of the object’s creator” interesting distinction, death of the author - “a work, once done, stands independent of its production and the intentions of artists or creators are irrelevant to critics’ responses to their works” 12
  • what emotion does the interaction induce, and which of these emotions lead to actions
  • virtual agents interacting with flat UI as if they can access it the same as us
  • simulating a bond with an animal as a means to care for that animal (to drive donations for the actual animal)
  • not necessarily accurate depictions, but to inspire fear. Situated embodiment to enhance reality and presence and immersion
  • entering any address and recieving a result brings the problem physically closer and therefore emotionally closer
  • I’m not sure I want to evoke negative emotions unless they ARE based in a strong reality. And are alongside a drive for action that is actually maximally achievable. Useful anger, useful fear, not aimless worry and doom.
  • unethical to evoke these emotions where unwarranted eg to sell unethical marketing
  • rhetoric possibilities of interaction towards “broadening capabilities of interface designers as to building arguments”