Second Presidential Debate: Analyzing Trump's Modes of Persuasion

Hi!

This week I decided to look at my research at a different perspective. Usually, I normally try to find sources that look at the effective use of Trump’s rhetoric, but I came across an article that actually undermines Trump’s rhetoric during the second presidential debate. I thought I would address some of the counterarguments this week.

Molly Bishop Shadel and Robert N. Sayler are the authors of Tongue-Tied America, and they manage a blog that analyzes the rhetoric of the 2016 presidential race. They analyzed Trump’s rhetoric in the second debate by splitting his effective use in the three modes of persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos.

They claim, “Trump’s logos would be greatly improved if he were to keep an eye on the main point, avoid digressions, and finish a thought. Instead, he tends to speak in long, rambling phrases, interrupting himself when a new idea floats into his mind. “

They give an example of when Trump was supposed to answer the question of how he’s going to end Obamacare, yet make coverage accessible for people with pre-existing conditions, to which he replied, “You’re going to have plans that are so good. Because we are going to have so much competition in the insurance industry, once we break out the lines and allow the competition to come. . . . And we will be able to keep pre-existing. We’ll also be able to help people who can’t get, don’t have money. Because we are going to have people protected.”

Shadel and Sayler claim that it is still unclear how Trump will help people who can’t afford insurance, simply stating that his propositions are true without clear evidence to back up his claim. In my opinion, the whole claiming things without backup evidence is actually one of Trump’s tactics because he merely fluffs his language with the things he’ll do to garner people’s attention. There are multiple instances where he does this, including the Iran deal (America giving money in exchange for hostages). Furthermore, while the source may claim that his use of jumbled and incomplete sentences ruin his use of logos, as said before, he purposefully utilizes elementary level language to emphasize the important things, leaving the unimportant filler words for people to gloss over. However, while I do agree that Trump’s use of logos is weak (as somebody who listened on the debate), I believe that he purposefully talks like this to gain attention.

Next, Shadel and Sayler mentioned that Trump’s use of pathos revolves a lot around negative feelings and fear, especially focusing on words like “bad,” “horrible things,” “death,” and etc. However, as stated previously on my other posts, those strong, emphatic words are the key to his rhetoric campaign—to leave an impactful presence on the audience. Also, in my opinion, rather than focusing on the positive, the negative is what really forces people to re-think and take action because it might directly affect them. (In contrast to Hillary’s more positive campaign strategy)

Lastly, Trump’s use of ethos is clearly weak because many of the claims he makes are not very credible. Clearly, the second debate is known for the controversial claim that Trump makes—bragging about sexually assaulting women—to which he just answers as “locker-room banter.”

Shadel and Sayler make a clear statement that his reply is very inappropriate and clearly does not reflect Aristotle’s original purpose of ethos, being, “good sense, good moral sense, and goodwill.”

I am still trying to figure out how Trump was able to bypass all of these controversial comments that were clearly made to attack a specific group of people. His ethos is incredibly weak, yet he was able to manage supporters from the very groups he attacked—minorities, women, etc.

But that is all for this week—thank you for reading!

--Gina