Who Are You Talking To?

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There was not a lot of pathos in the essay and the pathos that was present was not effective because it was not directed to any of the intended audiences. The pathos that was present was evident in the word choice the author used. In the first paragraph the author uses the word “detest” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 1) to remind the audience how much “WE” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 1) dislike homework. He then goes on to say, “As soon as we start, we feel mentally exhausted, and the quality of our work suffers”(O’Keefe, 2014, para. 1). By using the words “mentally exhausted” and “suffers” he is playing with the emotion of frustration that people have had when doing homework and the result of the frustration. While this use of pathos is effective towards students, it is not to the intended audience which happens to be the teachers, parents, and managers. This lack of including the intended audience in any way is what makes the pathos completely unsuccessful. In the following paragraph, O’Keefe then plays off of a less frustrating emotion by explaining how it wouldn’t be so hard if the work being done were actually enjoyable (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 2). He uses words like “energized” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 2) and “fascinating” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 2) to make the audience think about past work that to most seemed uninteresting but to them it was not as bad because they enjoyed it. This again is a good use of pathos but is not directed to the correct audiences. Another example of pathos is found in the last paragraph which has again more emotional words such as “crucial”, “mundane”, and “exciting” (O’Keefe, 2014, para. 14). My using the word “crucial” the author makes it clear that what he is saying is very important and should be taken care of. The word “mundane” was used to describe the work that someone does not enjoy while “exciting” describes the work that was enjoyable. However, this use of pathos was not clearly directed towards the whole intended audience but just one, teachers. Because of this, pathos is ineffective again.

The overall rhetorical effect of this article was not good. The author, while stating his audience clearly, did not actually talk to all of them throughout the editorial. He specifically only talked to the teachers of middle school, high school, and college students. Because of this, his use of ethos, logos, and pathos were not effective because he either only targeted one or none of his three intended audiences. If the author included his other two audiences or just had teachers as his only audience, the editorial would be much more effective. Other writers should take this analysis and learn from O’Keefe’s mistakes of only talking to one intended audience and make sure that they know who they are talking to, and address accordingly. An author wouldn’t want to be teaching philosophical ideas to a nursery of babies would he?

References:

P. A. O’Keefe. (2014 September 15). Liking Work Really Matters. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/opinion/sunday/go-with-the-flow.html