WordFilter: Word for emotional argument?

April 22, 2009 8:49 AM

Word Filter: What is the word for emotional argument? I've struggled to remember it, Googled it, etc. and can't for the life of me remember it - please help!
posted by gnash to writing & language (16 answers total)

Pathos?
posted by Partial Law at 8:52 AM on April 22, 2009

Could it be "ad..." something? (like "ad personam, ad hominem, ad populum") is it Latin? there's a few of those, might help narrow it down...
posted by bitteschoen at 8:59 AM on April 22, 2009

A spat? a remonstration? an expostulation?
posted by jourman2 at 9:00 AM on April 22, 2009

... in case it is Latin, this page lists a few and there one for "appeal to emotion" which is "ad baculum"

is that what you're looking for, fallacies of argument/reasoning?
posted by bitteschoen at 9:02 AM on April 22, 2009

Histrionics?
posted by kuujjuarapik at 9:19 AM on April 22, 2009

Pathos seconded. The three Aristotelian arguments are logos, ethos, and pathos commonly interpreted as appeal to logic, appeal to character/reputation, and appeal to emotion.
posted by beelzbubba at 9:43 AM on April 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

Ad hominem was what I was thinking of - many thanks fellow MeFites!
posted by gnash at 10:14 AM on April 22, 2009

Ad hominem means "to man," meaning attacking your debating partner personally, as opposed to arguing facts rationally. It does not mean emotional argument.
posted by General Malaise at 10:33 AM on April 22, 2009

I know you have your answer, but here is a link with some Subfallacies. And another good resource.
posted by syntheticfaith at 11:19 AM on April 22, 2009

More specifically, ad hominem means using a personal attack on someone to dispute a claim. From the Wikipedia article:

It must be clear that the purpose of the characterization is to discredit the source offering the argument, and, specifically, to invite others to discount its arguments. In the past, the term ad hominem was sometimes used more literally, to describe an argument that was based on an individual, or to describe any personal attack. However, this is not how the meaning of the term is typically introduced in modern logic and rhetoric textbooks, and logicians and rhetoricians are in agreement that this use is incorrect.
posted by burnmp3s at 11:20 AM on April 22, 2009

I believe the term you're looking for is an appeal to emotion.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:41 AM on April 22, 2009

Affective argument would also be technically correct.
posted by mrmojoflying at 1:54 PM on April 22, 2009

No, AD HOMINEM is correct.

That is the original sense of ad hominem, or "to the person," fallacy—an emotional appeal. On the internet, the primary meaning has shifted to another interpretation of "ad hominem," namely "against the man." This is similar to how "begging the question" now has a different vernacular meaning than its rhetorical origins.

This is also an object lesson in why you shouldn't give Wikipedia too much credence: The bit that burnmp3s quoted cites as justification a James Randi article that, in turn, cites the Wikipedia page for Ad Hominem. Which, of course, begs the question regarding the opinion of logicians and rhetoricians.
posted by klangklangston at 2:50 PM on April 22, 2009

"To the person" doesn't inherently mean an emotional appeal. In fact, I would say that it literally means that it is an attack against the person. You can certainly have an emotional appeal that is not attacking your opponent personally, and vice versa.

Even if you argue that the term originally was once synonymous with "emotional appeal" -- it is usage that reflects the meaning of "ad hominem" in English, as with any word. Unless you believe that any person parsing the language has a secret connection to the word's historical meaning at some specific time, then it doesn't matter if "ad hominem" used to have some extra nuance loaded into it that made it apply exclusively to emotional appeals.

Nearly every single person uses "ad hominem" to mean "personal attack", so if you want to communicate effectively, then you ought to bear that in mind, no?

Heck, the word "reek" used to just mean "to smell" without any negative connotations (and "riechen" still works that way in German), but I'd have to be pretty daft to tell everyone they are using it wrong.
posted by kosmonaut at 6:49 AM on April 23, 2009

""To the person" doesn't inherently mean an emotional appeal. In fact, I would say that it literally means that it is an attack against the person. You can certainly have an emotional appeal that is not attacking your opponent personally, and vice versa."

No, what was meant was that it was appealing to the humanity, the emotion, rather than to reason. Argument to the humanity.

"Even if you argue that the term originally was once synonymous with "emotional appeal" -- it is usage that reflects the meaning of "ad hominem" in English, as with any word. Unless you believe that any person parsing the language has a secret connection to the word's historical meaning at some specific time, then it doesn't matter if "ad hominem" used to have some extra nuance loaded into it that made it apply exclusively to emotional appeals."

Well, no, it really doesn't reflect the meaning of the phrase in English, as I've pointed out. It reflects a secondary usage. Which is why if you, say, check a dictionary, you'll usually find "emotional appeal" as the first definition and "personal attack" as the second. In this way, as I pointed out and you seem to have missed, it is like "begging the question," a logic term that has a colloquial meaning. If you're using "ad hominem" in the context of fallacies with people who know fallacies, they'll understand "emotional appeal."

It's not a "secret connection" to know how to use a dictionary, and phrasing it that way is stupid.

"Nearly every single person uses "ad hominem" to mean "personal attack", so if you want to communicate effectively, then you ought to bear that in mind, no?"

No, they don't. Nearly every person on the internet does, but you're conflating your audience with all audiences. And if you're using "ad hominem" to dismiss an argument that appeals to emotion, that should be pretty clear from context. As soon as you start tossing Latin around, you're assuming a decent level of education in your audience.

"Heck, the word "reek" used to just mean "to smell" without any negative connotations (and "riechen" still works that way in German), but I'd have to be pretty daft to tell everyone they are using it wrong."

Where did I say that using "ad hominem" to mean "personal attack" was wrong? The asker asked for the phrase that meant an appeal to emotion, which is "ad hominem." That it also can mean something else does not mean that it does not mean appeal to emotion, and if you're confused by that you should avoid discussions of both language and logic.
posted by klangklangston at 8:31 AM on April 23, 2009

It's worth noting that in Richard Lantham's 1969 guide, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms , which is a pretty substantial (though certainly not canonical) primer on rhetoric, argumentum ad hominem has two entries:

1) Abuse of your opponent's character.
2) Basing your argument on what you know of your opponent's character.

This was, of course, long before anything resembling the modern "Internet" was available.

As such, an ad hominem argument is categorized as a logical fallacy (in the strict sense of logic) that is sub-categorized as an appeal to emotion, because, roughly, making an ad hominem argument is intended to appeal to someone's feelings towards the person in question and not their thoughts.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an ad hominem argument is:

"A phrase applied to an argument or appeal founded on the preferences or principles of a particular person rather than on abstract truth or logical cogency."

Again, meaning that what is appealed to is the emotional state of the audience (as Klang is arguing), but it is different from other affective (or emotional) arguments in that it draws attention away from the "facts" and directly to the "character" or "principles" of the person delivering those facts. That is different than, say, making an emotional appeal about the facts themselves.

We can see this is true from a cited usage in the year 1633 from William Ames Fresh Suit Against Ceremonies (pg. 105) "Some arguments, and answers are ad hominem, that is, they respect the thing in quæstion, not simply, but as it commeth from such a man. "

The argumentum ad hominem belongs to the category of "emotional appeal," not vice-versa. I believe this has always been true, but I admit I haven't read up on it's first established usage which was in 1599 by Robert Parsons in A Temperate Ward-Word, nor have I done (or intend to do) an etymology of it.

As a rhetorician by degree (which would be a fallacious "appeal to authority," if I had not presented the case above, particularly since I'm not particularly expert in classical rhetoric or logic), I have to say that this is the only way I have been taught, used, or seen argumentum ad hominem used by others in professional literature. I could be wrong, but I really think the problem here is one of slightly confused taxonomy where the subordinate and superordinate categories of argumentum ad hominem and "appeal to emotion," respectively, are switched.
posted by mrmojoflying at 11:56 AM on April 23, 2009 [1 favorite]