By
Obododimma Oha
Every beggar needs to be a polyglot. For one, the beggar interacts with the public and a large number of diverse individuals. This requires mastering their languages, to be able to communicate well with them. Next is the need to impress them, to make them want to show the joy accompanying this identification by opening their wallets and letting some amount travel out.
Who would not be excited that that beggar speaks his or her language and is close to the prospective giver? Who would not want to identify with the fellow who has just identified with him or her through language? The person must be a stone and has nothing to feel! Identifying through sameness of tongue is even more exciting, come to think of it! That is your relative there asking for help!
Some people may need to be further prodded, persuaded, before they bring out their wallets and open them. So the beggar has to quickly switch languages and speak your mother tongue so fluently. The beggar can even use ancient proverbs and other deep sayings, showing the speaker must be an insider and great knower. Do you need further prodding? The eloquence is the proof already.
Before the beggar has opened the mouth to utter "Help me" in that language of your strong emotion, you have already opened your wallet to help your emotion. The beggar is just a reminder. Help that help!
Is that appeal to your fears about afterlife? That one is normal. How else could it be best expressed if not in that language of your strong emotion? It is your fantastic Heaven!
It could be the beggar has been studying you as possible target or may be just to test the linguistic hook on you. Beggars that know the art know their target and try to study them. But if it is a matter of trial and error - - let us see whether he or she would swallow this bait - - then that's normal in a competitive begging market. Every beggar has to move fast - - from one possible giver to the other.
Now, the beggar weaves a special rhetoric with your language, meant to arrest you finally. First and principally, that important appeal to the feeling of sympathy. Metaphors of helplessness. Hyperbole of depressing condition. Other tropes of pain.
OH, have I forgotten that evidence matters and is crucial to the appeal to reason? Receipts and invoices purportedly from a clinic. They are on the high side and the beggar cannot pay (you just have to help), don't mind the embarrassment that the sheets of paper may be torn or that the sheets are turning brown. It is the bad weather out here and the symptoms of the illness.
Every giver has a good, caring heart and would be rewarded. Listen to the rain of prayers! God loves every cheerful giver expecting payment by Heaven. Is that appeal to ethos not sound enough? Well, finally that hard-headed fellow would open his wallet, at least to appear good in the eyes of others present.
Can't you see how the appeal to feeling very cleverly becomes appeal to ethos becomes appeal to reason? Or one pretends to be the other! That shows that the medication is not direct. Every strategy is sick and can only be treated with money.
This has become a practised art. Experience is the best teacher. Now that you are begging for help from other countries, become humble and get ready to learn. But, above all, take language seriously. Manipulate it. Bend it. Use it. It is a beggar's thing.
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