Tone

I received a personal message recently from the President of the United States. Well, it might not have been exclusively for me, but I consider myself part of the Union to which Obama was addressing. Plus, when I looked deep into his big, brown, Obama eyes it felt like he was delivering it especially to me, so maybe that counts. Anyway, I realize that this is technically a transcript of a speech, but I assume it was written down at some point before actually being spoken. Here were a few tone-heavy excerpts that stood out to me.

Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For 220 years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They've done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they've done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle.

This was pretty much the first line, and for some reason it's not what I expected. It immediately establishes a sort of divisive formality, distancing himself from his audience. I imagined he would spend at least a few paragraphs in the beginning on the usual ingratiating political pandering, talking about how honored he is to be here giving his first state of the union and blah blah blah. But instead it almost sounds like he's pissed he has to be there. "Our Constitution declares that ... the President shall give to Congress information" sounds like "since the Constitution is making me, I guess I'll give you guys a head's up." Although I can sympathize with not wanting to be in a room full of congressmen.

One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse, and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression.

Just in case you forgot. Wow, I don't like this new downer Obama. Again, he continues to distance himself, this time by reminding us that "it's not my fault, it was broke when I found it." Though, of course, everything he said was true, the bluntness of these opening remarks almost came across as defensive to me.

For these Americans and so many others, change has not come fast enough. Some are frustrated; some are angry. They don't understand why it seems like bad behavior on Wall Street is rewarded, but hard work on Main Street isn't.

Here Obama is trying to establish some rapport and solidarity by building himself up as the hero of the downtrodden. By talking about Americans in the third person it almost seems as if he's not speaking to us anymore, but that he's speaking for us, defending us against the evil forces that threaten our livelihood. I only wish he would have stayed away from the Wall Street/Main Street dichotomy. It's just too clichéd and too easy. Let's just blame it all on a street. As if focusing all our rage on one symbolic scapegoat of an industry will resolve all of our problems.

Our administration has had some political setbacks this year, and some of them were deserved. But I wake up every day knowing that they are nothing compared to the setbacks that families all across this country have faced this year. And what keeps me going -– what keeps me fighting -– is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism, that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people, that lives on.

I notice that he chose not to elaborate on what the "deserved setbacks" were, but I appreciate that he made this admission. It contributed to a tone of sincerity and humility, that he could admit to mistakes. And at the end he again takes on the role of our tireless champion, pledging to keep "fighting" to preserve the American spirit.

What was your favorite line of the SOTU?

Defining Objectives

Defining Objectives Worksheet

Rhetoric

Because of our modern societies' vast scientific achievements, we might tend to think that facts and deductive reasoning completely govern how we think. We imagine we are intelligent beings who can tell a truth from a falsity and are only swayed by evidence. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Deduction is only one tool in a powerful field of persuasion called rhetoric. All rhetorical arguments can be divided into three categories: logos, pathos and ethos.

Logos is what many of us would assume is the most persuasive argumentative technique. This is the purely logical. Facts and beliefs are arrived at through untainted deductive reasoning. In this manner, we can reduce statements to a binary true or false. This is the field of rhetoric we hope our world is governed by.
Mathematicians, engineers, judges and public officials we trust deal only in logos. They are swayed only by facts and logic. However, this is often not the case as logical arguments can become shrouded by the fog of the remaining two rhetorical categories.

No man can be an expert in all things. In today's complicated world there is simply too much information for one lowly human to accumulate. This is why we specialize, and why we defer to the judgment and expertise of other people. We take a statement from these experts as likely to be accurate because we assume they have analyzed the logical arguments and reached the proper conclusion. We then adopt their conclusions as our beliefs based on our faith in their reputation. We have outsourced our logical thinking to other humans and trust their conclusions are correct. This is the rhetorical category of ethos: when we are persuaded by certain arguments, not because of their inherent worth, but because of the status of those making them.

Unfortunately, neither of these rhetorical methods can safeguard us from illogical thinking. This is due in large part to the extremely persuasive powers of pathos. Pathos arguments function by manipulating us through our emotions. They persuade not because they are logical, but because they inspire a particular feeling within us. It may make us happy or frightened or patriotic or nostalgic. In this way it subverts our logical mind. We may not even be able to identify exactly what emotions it plays to, but nevertheless it can use our subconscious against us. This is an instinctual response which has served mankind well throughout our evolutionary history. Without emotional thinking we would never have been able to survive to invent logic. Avoiding things that frightened us and pursuing things that made us happy proved very advantageous to our development as a species. However today our susceptibility to pathos serves to further the agenda in the arena of marketers, political hopefuls, religious leaders, and anywhere else irrational thinking rules.