The Use Of Logos, Pathos And Rhetorical Devices In Tom Harkin's Speech On Child Labor In The Cocoa Industry

Today it is an almost agreed upon fact in every society, culture or race that every child’s role in society is that of steady and appropriate development. In every culture children are meant to blossom in a kind and enriching environment, gradually preparing them to confront the challenges of every day and highly hoping that they can conquer the adversities of tomorrow.

Psychologists nowadays, view child development as a process with four main phases. The first phase, widely known as the sensorimotor stage, is the stage where children primarily depend on their senses to observe and learn from their surrounding environment. Second, juveniles begin to grasp memories and ideas of the imagination in a phase called by psychologists as the preoperational stage. Third, from ages seven to eleven, children begin to understand events of their surrounding world, becoming less self-involved and understanding others in a stage known as the concrete operational stage. Finally in the formal operations stage, children become capable to overcome issues and begin to plan for their future.

Unfortunately at present, not every child gets to go through all these phases for the idea of “life” as we know it, is not thought of in the same way throughout all the nations of our world. In some of our nations poverty, unemployment and the inadequate enforcement of laws have seized children away from their homes and schools and brought them back to work. More than 200 million kids are involved in child labor according to a poll by The World Counts. Hence the number of anti child labor activists and organizations increases by the day. Back in 2014, senator Tom Harkin delivered a groundbreaking speech on the senate flour on the topic of child labor in the cocoa industry. In his speech, Harkin uses a strong yet relatable choice of words which carry an abundant amount of persuasive devices including ethos, pathos and logos. As holidays such as Halloween and Christmas dawn upon us, millions of kids and adults around the globe begin thinking about their future indulgences of chocolate rich candies and sweets. Life in other nations of the globe, however, tends to be less sweet in tastes and more bitter in reality. To deeply understand how well our orator and author Tom Harkin was able to persuade his audience we must be familiar with the topic he dissects.

Child labor has almost always been a common phenomenon throughout human history, but it wasn’t till the industrial revolution of the 19th century did the phenomenon turn into a worldwide problem. The cocoa industry has always been one where the reliance on child labor was excessive and unfortunately that is still true today. Over the previous decade, foreign countries, mainly in west Africa, have been criticized for their disturbing use of child labor for the mass production of cocoa. The main countries which receive criticism are Ghana and the Ivory Coast which according to an article by John Robbins are responsible for about “43 percent of the world's supply”. Traffickers usually promise children payments along with housing and education. A dream which soon turns into a nightmare, kids end up working up to a 100 hours, beaten and abused. Some kids remark that after they “pick the beans they have to carry them in bags weighing about 100 pounds leaving their shoulders scarred and bruised”.

The cruel nature of the industry has been unraveled by many stories which exposed the monstrosity of the working conditions. It all dates back to the “summer of 2001, when the Knight Ridder Newspapers ran a series of investigative articles that revealed… profiled young boys who were sold as slaves to the Ivory Coast cocoa farmers”, a revelation that would change the view on chocolate production forever. Such stories called for action in the forms of laws and bills to eradicate forced child labor and a prime example is the Harkin-Engel Protocol. Yes indeed, Harkin as in our author Tom Harkin worked alongside democratic representative Eliot Engel of New York state to subject chocolate manufactures to agree to eradicate the worst forms of child labor. The Protocol was “signed in 2001, the cocoa industry, along with governments, civil society, and labor unions, committed to address the worst forms of child labor and eliminate it from cocoa supply chains”. Although it has been slow, the progress made by the protocol is undeniable and instrumental in changing corporate policies of companies like Hershey’s, Kit Kat, and Nestle which have set down a list of new rules and actions, lessening the use of child labor and slavery for the purpose of chocolate production. After gathering information about what our author talks about we are then able to comprehend what they say much more easily. However, before we move on to start analyzing how they manipulate us as an audience we need to figure out whether or not their words have any value.

To answer the questions such as who is my author, why is motivated to talk about what he talks about and should I trust him, readers should get to know their speaker. In 2014 senators Tom Harkin was the number one prime activist against child labor in the political arena. Representing the state of Iowa, He was a United States senator for thirty years, a member of the democratic party, an attorney, and an author. After Harkin had served a total of five senatorial terms, he ended up becoming “chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions” (HARKIN) which is probably where his passion for helping child labourers was ignited. Our speech was given on June 12th of 2014, which is the day designated as world day against child labor day. In his speech senator Harkin reflected upon the efforts and the accomplishments of the United States to combat child labor in the past decade. Through the way he organizes the speech he delivers, the senator highlights many possible reasons why he is delivering his speech. For instance, the first part of his speech deals with his personal first hand experience with witnessing child labor and that could be due to the fact that Harkin wants to establish a sense of trust between him and his audience.

On the other hand, as the speech comes to end, the idea that the United States has been of immense help to win the battle against child labor is also demonstrated. That could similarly be due to the fact that Harkin wanted to encourage the senators to see how much their countries help is needed. When a writer desires to have his topic be one of interesting nature to his crowd, he must perceive the nature of his audience. As Harklin was composing his speech, he recognized the nature of his audience and as a result, he tailored his speech to fit their nature as senators of the united states of America. While maintaining a level of sophistication in his choice of language, the author makes sure that the language is still understandable by a much wider future audience which might be not well educated on his topic.

Not only is it critical to understand who the author is, why he says what he says and who his audience is, it is important to be able to figure out how and why we should be affected by his words. As a greek word, ethos translates to the word character and as a result refers to the speaker’s credibility and our belief in what he says because of who he is and what sources he uses. Although it is not quite noticeable by the audience ethos is an extremely influential persuasive technique which establishes trust between the author or speaker and the receivers of their message. As Senator Harkin first begins his speech, he talks about his work in the field of combating the abusive sector of child labor. As the senate saw images that the senator projected, they simultaneously heard the words “these pictures I have in the chamber are, as a matter of fact, pictures I took myself”. Such words are incredibly simple and short, but they have such heavy weight for they automatically add validity, reliability and a source of respect for the speaker. The fact that the senator himself took the picture highlights not only the fact that he is knowledgeable about the topic, but that fact that his witnessing of the event is a key or a portal into understanding what the children happen to go through. As the speech goes on and the successes of the United States in placing an end to child labor are further highlighted, Tom does not hide the truth from his listeners and does bring up failed efforts such as the inability of “stakeholders to reach a majority of children exposed to harsh forms of labor”.

Finally, one major appeal to the character of the audience is when the author makes a statement which raises an ethical question amongst members of the audience. Indeed, when Harklin declares “we are resolved to act without regard to party affiliation and with high regard for the interests of kids trapped in abusive labor”, he strikes a question of humanity in the hearts of the audience and readers. This statement calls into question, do we abandon children in abusive situations only to keep ourselves from cooperating with people we express slight disagreements with, and as a result raises an appeal of morality. Ethos does in fact prove to be immensely powerful when shaping someone’s thoughts but it can not stand alone, not without reason and logic. While some readers are easily persuaded by emotions or credibility alone, it is almost highly true that all readers could be quickly persuaded by evidence and facts. The play on the audience’s need for logic is one of the best rhetorical devices used by writers and is commonly known as logos.

In his informative speech, Tom Harkin discusses the Department of Labor’s International Affairs Bureau or the ILAB, which is responsible for producing “an annual report in which our government formally monitors and documents the effort or lack of effort of 144 countries and territories receiving U. S. trade benefits to meet their international commitments to eliminate the worst forms of child labor”(Harkin 2). He then mentions the successes of the bureau from funding “269 projects to combat exploitive child labor in 90 countries” to rescuing “1. 7 million children”. The author brings up such facts to assure the senators that their governmental office is proving effective at doing its job and the facts might have an underlying target of making sure the policymakers still view the ILAB as an effective and much needed bureau. To keep his public far away from asking “what does what he is talking about have to do with us?” the author adds on a statistic declaring that “60 percent of all chocolate is consumed in america”.

The use of logos through a statistic here maintains a sense of responsibility among audience members and keeps the audience engaged wanting to hear what Harkin wants to say. It is also important to keep in mind that although not all what the senator says is backed up by a set of research and references, the readers could still believe him for he has established a sense of credibility through his establishment of the rhetorical device ethos.

Finally, one very influential and persuasive use of logos by Harkin is when he recollects American history. As he modeled his writing, the democratic senator considered his audience, well informed senators of the United States and as a result brought up evidence they were familiar with. Trying to demonstrate a presence of similarity he says “ In the 1800s we can see all kinds of pictures of kids working in our mills, working on road crews… it is amazing that the arguments we heard then against stopping child labor are some of the same arguments we hear now”. In such statement the author is able to assert a level of relatability to his topic among his listeners and potential readers.

Lastly, the final rhetorical device is one of ultimate presence when it comes to the topic of abusive child labor, and that device is pathos. When it comes to persuasion, a highly convincing weapon is the appeal to emotion. While it also leads to an emotion, pathos also leads people to think a certain way about a certain thing and it often could stand alone as a method of persuasion. Although Harkin’s speech relies frequently on the strong basis of ethos and logos he does not forget that his audience needs to be able to relate to the topic on a personal level. Through his usage of firm words, Harkin strikes his audience with statements such as the following, “these children are robbed of their childhood, robbed of their education, robbed of their future. And in the countries where this takes place, the cycle is perpetuated.

Repetition is a strong rhetorical device used to stress an idea or concept in the mind of the audience. In this case, the repeated word is robbed which emphasizes that the phenomenon resembles a crime of which the children are the victims. Such statement could be used to make the audience feel a sense of responsibility, because it makes the audience seam as culprits to the crime for they stand silent and witness the tragic crime as it occurs. Initially, the crimes committed against children working forcefully in the cocoa industry were highly able to affect audiences and cause change. An example for the change they created could be the Harkin-Engel protocol. The creation of the protocol proves how emotions are highly capable of moving audiences to the degree of persuasion to stand up and demand for action to be taken.

The authors’second tactic of persuasion through pathos, comes with his statement“it has been a vicious cycle of poverty and using and exploiting these kids. They don’t learn, they don’t go to school, they become impoverished, and the cycle just continues and continues. We have to break that. ” What is interesting here, is Harkin’s last phrase and his usage of the word “we” which highlights his demand for united action. Harkin could not have used the phrase “you” for that would make the audience feel as if they were alone in a fight they didn't even want to be involved in. In addition, the usage of the word “I” could imply the idea that people are not instrumental when it comes to the topic and that their help is not highly required which could have negatively affected the main claim. An appeal to emotion is not always an easy task for it takes a certain audience to feel a certain way about something and in this speech Harkin rose to the occasion and was successful in some of his attempts to persuade his spectators. The most simple of words could carry the most powerful of meanings and could lift up audiences down as well as bring them down.

Tom Harkin proved that with the correct selection of words and a good sense of knowing who your audience is, a writer is able to use language and affect a large number of people. Whether his audience was to be the sophisticated Senators of the United States listening to his words as he gave his speech, or a remotely distant soccer mom reading the daily newspaper while drinking her morning coffee, Harkin wanted the text to affect everyone. Additionally, the senator went on to develop a sense of connection between himself and whoever his audience maybe by his usage of personal anecdotes and encounters with his topic.

As a result, that established trust and opened up doors for ethos which let the audience know their author is one they could trust for he is credible and knowledgeable. Keeping all his claims supported with evidence, historical background, and studies, Senator Harkin emphasized the big role logos plays in creating a certain thought in a person’s mind and how well it is able to persuade them. Finally, the author’s choice of moving words and repetition, help call forward the sense of humanity people hold, involving pathos and the feelings the audience starts to feel. Forced child labor is a crime against humanity which we are blind to and often ignore but Tom Harkin’s words make sure that the narrative changes. After listening to or reading his speech, our morality as humans is questioned, our eyes are fully opened to the facts, and our hearts are left scarred due to the horrors the children face. While children of the world peacefully undergo the four phases of development in the first decade of their lives, the children working in cocoa fields are broken down to become nothing but enslaved workers for the rest of their lives.