This chapter revisits Douglas Walton’s foundational work The Place of Emotion in Argument and situates it within contemporary developments in argumentation theory, cognitive pragmatics, and empirical discourse analysis. Walton’s concept of rational emotional appeals challenges the traditional opposition between reason and emotion, showing that emotional arguments can be normatively acceptable when they align with dialogue goals and rules. The chapter explores how Walton’s ideas, grounded in Pragma-Dialectics, have inspired further research into the integration of emotion within natural language argumentation. It examines the emotive potential of lexical choice, drawing on later developments by Walton and Macagno, while also distinguishing between emotional expression and deliberate emotional appeals. The chapter then expands this theoretical foundation through feminist and queer approaches, which critique the gendered assumptions embedded in the rational-emotional dichotomy. The work of Catherine Hundleby and M.A. Gilbert is discussed to highlight how emotion can function as both a communicative mode and a socially situated act. By combining these perspectives, the chapter provides the grounds for an interdisciplinary, empirically informed account of emotional appeals in real-world discourse, laying the conceptual groundwork for the interactional model of pathos developed in subsequent chapters.