The Idea of Pathos in Rhetoric: The Role of Linguistic Emotivity in Sustaining Local Creative Communities

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the implication of linguistic emotivity strategies in creating and empower the local creative communities that exists in the Central-Est-European cultural space, emphasizing on Iassy local community. The term “creative communities” can only be understood in the context of information society policy since they are the main brick for the industries that they represent. One of the most important elements that sustain a creative community is its members’ shared values. Once we talk about values, we automatically tend to correlate them with emotions. So we may ask what role plays the linguistic emotivity, or rhetorically speaking, the manifestation of pathos, in maintaining these communities as a whole. The linguistic emotivity includes the speaker’s attitude towards the speech act, toward the content of what is conveyed, feelings toward audience, emotions associated with interaction, as well as the general mood, feelings and sentiment the speaker and the audience experience and share in communication. Hence, this article will also include, besides theoretical aspects, a review of some local influencers’ speeches from Iassy in order to notice if they are using pathos in their communication with creative communities and how they use it.