By Ashoke Agarrwal
In the Western canon, the three elements of argumentative persuasion are Logos, Ethos and Pathos. It is a commentary on our Western-designed education system that, while I am peripherally aware of this Aristotlean concept, I am painfully unaware of its equivalent, distant or near, in the Indian canon. For this column, I did search the internet fruitlessly to fill the gap. Perhaps we need to do a better job of bringing Indian philosophical heritage to the Internet Age.
For now, I will roll with the Logos, Ethos and Pathos triad and apply it to the existing Indian political discourse.
Logos means persuading using reasoning, which includes cognition, analytical skills, good memory and purposeful behaviour.
Aristotle called Ethos the “face created by discourse” and results in “ethical appeal” or the appeal for credibility. Modern analysts of political discourse distinguish between two types of Ethos: Preliminary Ethos and Discourse Ethos. Preliminary Ethos is the credibility or lack of it that results from the apriori knowledge and impression that the target of political communication (speech, news, OpEd, advertisement) has of the source of the communication (party, leader, government, journalist, expert). Discourse Ethos stems from the content of the communication and its context. The Preliminary Ethos and Discurse Ethos interact and reinforce or clash.
Pathos links directly with the target of political communication. Pathos is the power with which the political message moves the target to the desirable emotional state and action. This power depends mainly upon understanding the target’s concerns and attitudes. Finer and more profound the understanding greater the pathos power that a well-crafted political message can deliver.
The Logos, Ethos, and Pathos triad is a framework that can help analyse the strengths and weaknesses of political parties and alliances in India (for that matter, any nation) without getting mired in partisan emotions. It is also a handy way to critique the efficacy or otherwise of that handmaiden of politics – the news media. In the modern world, genuinely independent news media is a myth; thus, all news media are integral to political discourse. Even a Large-Language-Model-based no-human-intervention model would create a flow of news that will lean in a political direction because the world, in any given era and place, tilts one way or another.
In my analysis, one political force in India has emerged distinctly more effective over a decade than the opposing force because they have scored on all three dimensions – Logos, Ethos and Pathos – of political discourse.
In 2014, the component of their Logos was driven chiefly by the media-created memory of high corruption, the Ethos of the perceived effectiveness of the rule in a given state in contrast to the national government and the Pathos on the hopes and aspirations of a young electorate.
In 2019, the narrative had to change. Paradoxically, as society’s economic pie grows, generally, so does covetousness. This paradox also applies, in general, to individuals, families and businesses. The more one has, the less ready one is to share. So, the Logos in 2019 shifted to the promise of large sections of society for a more significant share of the pie, the Ethos based on the credibility arising from a largely high-corruption-free and distribution-efficient regime, and the Pathos shifted to mine the identity lode that gave a large section of society the comfort of being insiders in the game of power.
The incumbent coalition in 2014 based its political discourse on the Logos of “more of the same”, the Ethos on “familiarity”, and Pathos on the “fear and disgust of the evil pretender”.
In 2019, the Opposition abandoned even the basic principles of political discourse and tried to come back based on Pathos alone – again assuming a widespread antipathy about the governing party and its leader.
How is it going to play out in 2024?
The governing party has to change its template. All three dimensions need to shift.
A large section of the electorate has only experienced the ruling party at the centre. Evoking in the Logos a contrast with earlier dispensation is of diminishing utility except for in ultra-political settings like debates in Parliament. Communications to the larger electorate evoking the misdeeds of an opposing dispensation from more than a decade ago will be seen as a case of “whataboutism” and be counterproductive. A decade of governance leaves a track record that can’t help but be patchy, giving something to complain about almost everybody- in Indian politics, this is famously known as anti-incumbency.
Given the profound and common trauma of the pandemic, will the politics of division and identity still carry its appeal? Or, given its political savvy, will the ruling dispensation shift to the Logos of development and the efficacy of a proven model and the Pathos of aspiration to count among the first rank of nations and the quality of life of a developed country? In terms of Ethos, most polls put the image of the leader of the current dispensation among the highest in the world, and his powers of idiomatic Hindi oratory evoke emotional identification across the Hindi belt. In non-Hindi States, this power is diminished, and the inability of the party to project local leaders who speak the local idiom is a significant shortcoming.
Is the opposition getting its act together? Forming a pre-poll alliance seems reasonable, and the first-time effort of the dynast from the leading opposition party to establish a connection with the electorate through grassroot action should add to the Pathos of the appeal even though in speech, he is still far from acquiring idiomatic cadence. If the pre-poll alliance holds in the hurly-burly of ticket distribution and regional leaders put their idiomatic shoulders to the wheel, the Pathos that the opposition brings to the 2024 election will be a level or two higher than the 2019 fray.
But what about Logos and Ethos? Does an all-out effort to diminish the leader of the ruling dispensation give them a leg up on the Logos and Ethos dimensions? Does fear-mongering about the state of the country and its institutions do so? Or does it need to focus on a rational plank that answers the question – Why Us? – instead of constantly harping on – “Not them!”.
The 2024 General Election in India will be a game of high strategy if both players play it well. Whichever way the result goes, such a result will serve India well. If one of the two falters, it will end up in a rout; if both falter, it will be a toss-up. Either way, such a result would have failed India.
What about the media? The English language media gets far too much focus from pundits. Its impact on Indian politics is marginal. On the other hand, the regional language media has a vital role to play along with increasingly important social media influencers. Regional TV is increasingly producing celebrity anchors who are masters of local idiom and are far more jingoistic than any politician dare be. The discourse by these anchors is genuinely in the Goebbelsian mode, where Pathos overpowers Logos and is the fount that produces its own Ethos.
As for social media, too much is made of the trolls and the bots. I suspect that the critical impact of social media results from a small set of influencers who follow the same playbook as the celebrity anchors of regional TV.
Finally, the Logos, Ethos, and Pathos triad applies to market and political communication because the end objective is persuasion. However, the dynamics of the marketing triad differ from that in politics. In essence, political communication focuses on competition as it is, overtly or covertly, on us-and-them themes. In marketing, the underlying theme is more aspirational-focused, focusing on the target individual’s needs and dreams. As societies grow more prosperous and developed, the theory was that political communication becomes more like marketing communication. However, recent and ongoing politics in the developed world has tended to disprove this hypothesis.