The Role of Pathos in Rhetoric.
In the previous post, we examined a 2009 speech by then Anglo-American CEO Cynthia Carroll to executives of outside mining contractors about the paramount importance of the workers being safe in the mines. While she was incontestably right in substance, she used a slightly hectoring tone, which was counterproductive. She would have been better off using more clearly persuasive language.
Carroll could have used the ancient teachings about rhetoric in considering how to persuade the executives. Classical rhetoric says that persuasion can proceed along three lines: 1) logos or the appeal to reason; 2) pathos, or emotional appeals; and 3) ethos, where the speaker puts their own credibility at the center of persuasion.
Of course, Carroll’s ethos was always central – the listeners had to believe in her sincerity, if for no other reason than to accept her seriousness in prioritizing safety. Here, she did well.
She also largely eschewed logos. This, too, was wise: logos is used for telling us how to get to the good end; but pathos is the best way to establish what end is good.
But she did not do nearly enough to discuss the emotional resonance of the issue. That was a missed opportunity. She did have some emotional parts, and for me, those were the most powerful:
Whenever I receive a call from one of the CEOs notifying me of an incident, my immediate feelings are always for the families of those we have lost.
I then begin to question; are we doing enough? Do these incidents suggest that our
programs aren’t working?
Here, we can see Carroll responding to her cell in the middle of the night and learning about another worker death.
Her mistake was in not continuing along this line, and in often falling back on banal, corporate phraseology. We early examined some language that I felt was peremptory. What if she had replaced that language with more emotional, sensorial detail? She might have said:
(My version).
I have closed shafts where workers struggled to breathe, changed managers who sneered at worker concerns, and terminated contracts where outside parties seemed high-handed about worker safety. I am willing to do this because for me, the fate of Anglo-American revolves around the axis of worker safety. I know you feel the same. And we will take any necessary steps in the future to keep people safe.
I believe fervently that if you as leaders show that you respect and are willing to care for your workers, they will care for one another, and the business will flourish.
Consider also what she said at the beginning:
We all know that safety has to start at the top. So your being here today, representing the most senior level of your respective companies, is an indication of the value that you, like us, place on safety and on the well-being of our people.
To me, this language is hackneyed and dead. She needed ringing language, appropriate for announcing to members of a cowboy corporate culture that things were changing. She might have used the rhetorical figure of antithesis and said:
We are at the top, chatting in comfort in this lighted room. But we must remember that we are only here because of the people who risk their lives thousands of feet below the earth with their faces often pressed against black rock. We depend on one another.
Unusual and dramatic? Yes. But, Carroll had to get through to the contractors and executives and middle managers who were viewing worker deaths with indifference. Her words had to absolutely reflect the reality of workers living and sometimes dying beneath the ground. She was dealing with an emergency, and that called for striking language – not vacuities.
Like what you read here? Need to find the axis of your message; the point around which you must pivot? Set up an appointment with me so that we can imbue your writing or presentation with the emotion and force necessary to help it command the attention of an audience and convince them that what you propose is the desirable good.
