Notes for January 12

Common places and Types of “Proof”

I. Common places have two different meanings: (1) specific procedure used to generate arguments, and (2) statements that circulate within ideologies.

A. Crowley and Hawhee discuss ideology in terms of “words about ideas” or “study of ideas.”

Ideology may also be defined as “a pattern or set of ideas, assumptions, beliefs, values, or interpretations of the world by which a culture or group operates” (Foss 291).

B. Ernest Bormann argues that we can discover ideologies and common places through understanding the ways people symbolically converge.

1. Symbolic Convergence is based on two assumptions:
a. Communication creates reality; symbolic forms are the organs of reality.
b. Individuals’ meanings converge to create a shared reality.

2. People who do not have a shared reality can literally create a common culture through symbolic forms, taking shape in social “dramas” or “stories” or “values.”

C. Commonplaces embrace the way we reason in relation to specific circumstances as well as what communal assumptions guide that reasoning.

II. There are three types of commonplaces according to Aristotle that are generalizable across contexts; Conjecture (past and future fact); Degree (whether a thing is greater or smaller than another thing); Possibility (what is and is not possible).

A. Conjecture: (past and future fact); rhetors use this type of reasoning to talk and write about the past in relation to what is happening in the present or what may be possible in the future.

1. Conjecture thus deals with:
a. What exists.
b. What does not exist.
c. The size or extent of what exists.
d. How things used to be (past).
e. How things will be in the future.

B. Degree: the common topic of greater/lesser--magnitude: “contemporary rhetors often try to establish that their position is good, just, honorable, or expedient” phrased in terms of its opposite values “what is bad, unjust, dishonorable, or inexpedient” (124).

1. Degree thus deals with:
a. What is greater than the mean or norm.
b. What is lesser than the mean or norm.
c. What is relatively greater than something else.
d. What is relatively lesser than something else.
e. What is good, just, beautiful, honorable, enjoyable, etc.
f. What is better, more just, etc.
g. What is less good, less just, etc.
h. What is good, etc. for all persons.
i. What is good, etc. for few persons or groups.
j. What has been better, etc. in the past.
k. What will be better, etc. in the future.

C. Possibility: the common topic of what is possible/impossible: “rhetors resort to the topic of possible/impossible in order to establish that change either is or isn’t possible, now or in the future” (Hawhee and Crowley 127).

1. Possibility thus deals with:
a. What is possible.
b. What is impossible.
c. What is more or less possible.
d. What is possible in the future.
e. What is impossible in the future.
f. What was possible or impossible in the past.

D. Sue Rahr editorial http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2010656223_guest04rahr.html