CONSIDERING THE AFFECTIVE POTENTIALS OF THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL IN PERSUASIVE DISCOURSE THROUGH MULTIMODALITY IN THE FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION CLASSROOM

In identifying ways to create inclusive spaces in the classroom, instructors should not be limited by singular modes of discourse to engage students. Particularly when teaching first-year students who seek to invent the university and claim their intellectual space within it, these considerations must be deeply integrated into the course curriculum and not seen as an extended project to be optional or added at the end of a semester. Rather, instructors must find ways to integrate multimodal discourses in the first-year composition course as a foundation of learning.
One way to do this is to engage students in multimodal practices of rhetorical appeals. This dissertation examines the theories and practices of emotional appeal, namely pathos, to construct meaning-making opportunities that transcend gatekeeping endeavors of singular modes of persuasion.
Through the transmission of affect, students can be given the opportunity to affectively respond through various modes of discourse in applying emotional appeal to practices of persuasion.